LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shell. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



— 

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\\\Y 



SPARKS 

FROM MY FORGE; 

REV. A; B. KENDIG, 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

REV. B. K. PEIRCE, D. D., 

EDITOR OF ZION'S HERALD. 



** Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few 
to be chewed and digested." Bacon, 



(T-B-sisiTZfz^fZ/Zns-a — 9 



BOSTON : 

B. B. RUSSELL & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

55 AND 57 CORNHILL. 

MDCCCLXXIX. 



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xT Copyright by *\p 

J*=£fj£ ^4. B. KENDIG, 3Z 

n, ^. 2>. 1879. J* 






Sargent & Wilson, Printers, Worcester. 



TO ALL WHO ARE 

EARNESTLY SEEKING THE PATH OF LIFE, 

AND TO THE FAITHFUL WORKERS WHO ARE STRIVING 

TO RECLAIM THE ERRING, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 



^gjH J* i j^ 



BY ITS AUTHOR; WHO, THROUGH GOD'S GRACE, AND THE 
AID OF LOVING CHRISTIANS, HAS FOUND THE DELIGHT- 
FUL WAY OF PEACE, JOY, PURITY AND LOVING 
SERVICE FOR CHRIST AND SOULS. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 




^ PARKS from my Forge " makes no claim 
to literary merit, scholastic excellence, ex- 
tensive research or theological novelty. Its 
history is the story of a saved life ; its 
" Pulpit Talks," the faithful words of a pastor's 
loving heart for the young men and women 
of the land ; its " Miscellany " gives my con- 
victions, experience, and information on its several 
topics. 

If the critic shall find something to condemn in 
arrangement, language, or doctrine, it is confidently 
believed the hungry will find food, the struggling 
hope, and all encouragement and comfort. 

If the story of my salvation shall inspire one soul 
to try and gain heaven ; if its pulpit talks, shall give 
impetus and direction to but one seeker of the better 
life ; and its miscellany give to the weary toilers only 
an hour of pleasurable occupation, I will forever 
praise Him who gave me strength and courage to 
write and issue the book. 

A. B. KENDIG. 
Worcester, Mass., Feb. 12, 1879. 



INTRODUCTION. 




3-* ' 

fY excellent friend — who has been made by the 
Master very successful in reaching classes of men 
■» t not always found in our houses of worship, whose 
pulpit themes and manner of treatment arrest the 
attention of persons not accustomed to attend religious 
services, and of others whose temptations and vices have 
made them well-nigh despair of reform and salvation, 
as well as of young people who have somewhat lost the 
relish they once had, in earlier and purer days, for the 
Church of their parents, and for the searching truths of the 
Gospel — has been persuaded to select some of the discourses 
which have been so successful, both in winning attention and 
securing conviction, and to give them a permanent form. 
Striking as they are, and full of the marrow of the Gospel, as 
well as made attractive by illustration, they will not seem to 
the calm reader as they did to the deeply impressed hearer 
when delivered. The man himself is absent. The pleasant 
and persuasive voice, the earnest manner, the searching or 
melting eye, the intense conviction symbolized in every move- 
ment of the preacher, are lacking as these incisive and whole- 
some words of exhortation, counsel and persuasion will be 
read. There is nothing so effective as the living speaker, 
standing as the ambassador of God, his whole soul moved by 
the solemnity and importance of his message, pleading with 
men to accept the divine terms of pardon and salvation. 

But when men have yielded their hearts to God in obedience 



INTRODUCTION. 

to the preached word, both the minister and his message 
become very dear to them. We are not surprised that the 
various congregations where our friend has ministered, as the 
appointed shepherd of the flock, desire to have, as prized me- 
mentoes, some of these well-remembered discourses. Other 
eyes also will fall upon them, and with the divine blessing, they 
will become the power of God unto salvation. The attractive- 
ness of their style and their fullness and freshness of illustration 
will awaken an interest in them that printed sermons rarely 
receive. Besides, his ministerial brethren will be glad to see 
the form in which he embodies the truth of the Gospel to make 
it so effectual in drawing the floating masses to the place of 
worship. 

It is a courageous and devout act to open his own heart and 
life to his readers, taking them all into his most intimate con- 
fidence and permitting them to look upon the saddest and 
darkest passages in his somewhat eventful career. His auto- 
biographical sketch is far from being the least interesting por- 
tion of the book. The writer is, indeed, a " brand plucked 
from the burning." His experience will give fresh courage to 
those who are praying and laboring to save the victims of appe- 
tite and those who have hardened themselves in wrong doing. 
It confirms once more the divine assertion that the special 
office of the Gospel is "to seek and to save that which is lost," 
and its efficiency to redeem even unto the uttermost. 

We cheerfully bid God-speed to this useful and impressive 
volume. It will go preaching on down the ages when its 
author, and those who have heard the sermons, have been long 
slumbering in the grave. May rich and abundant fruit from 
its sowing be constantly seen for many years to come; so that 
when its author rests from his labors, his work will still follow 
him to the scene of his reward ! 

BRADFORD K. PEIRCE. 
Zion's Herald Office, 

Boston, Feb. 17, 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR, 1-28 

PULPIT TALKS TO YOUNG MEN. 

Shadozved, 3 I- 39 

Dead Broke, . . 4°~49 

Taking Account of Stock, 5°~~57 

Not What I Expected, . 58-64 

Steady Under Fire, 65-73 

PULPIT TALKS TO YOUNG WOMEN. 

The Woman Admired, 77~%7 

The Woman Wooed, . 88-99 

The Woman Engaged, 100-117 

The Woman Married, 1 1 8-1 32 

The Woman's Dower, 133-144 

SPECIAL MISCELLANY. 

My First Ride on a Locomotive, 147-15 1 

A Take-off on Woman's Rights, IS 2 ~ 1 S^ 

Dancing and Dancers, 159-166 

The History of a Piece of Calico, 167-177 

Out-Door Preaching, 178-183 










/ / 




v 




TRINITY M. E. CHURCH, 

WORCESTER, MASS. 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 



A BRIEF SKETCH OF MY LIFE, FROM MY NATURAL 
TO MY SPIRITUAL BIRTH. 



IjS&BOUT the year 1683 the Mennonites received an 
®^ invitation from that noble Friend and Christian, 
William Penn, to emigrate to America, and settle 
on land in Pennsylvania. The generous offer was 
accepted by this oppressed people, who were anxious 
to escape Romish persecutions, and worship God 
according to their own convictions of duty. So gen- 
erally did they avail themselves of this invitation, that 
in less than fifty years some five hundred or more 
families came to Pennsylvania from England fwhither 
persecutions had driven them), the German Pala- 
tinates, and Switzerland. In 1709, under a special 
grant from this same wise governor and generous 
Christian, — Mr. Penn, — they established a colony 
in Pequa Valley, of what was then, and is now, Lan- 
caster County. 

Whether these colonists came directly from Europe, 
or only moved out from among those who had previ- 



2 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

ously settled in Germantown, I cannot now definitely 
say ; but among those colonists in Lancaster County 
are the names of Neff, Barr, Brackbill, Herr, Kendig, 
and others, so that my blood comes nationally from 
the Swiss, and religiously from the Mennonites : I 
should, therefore, be patriotic and pious. 

Francis Kendig married Anna Neff. Of the issue 
of this marriage, there were three children lived to 
adult age, — Francis, Katie, and Samuel. The latter 
married Susan, the daughter of Abraham and Susan 
Barr, of Bart Township. There were born to this 
husband and wife seven children, of whom the subject 
of this sketch was the sixth. 

I was born in Lampeter Township, on the banks of 
the Pequa Creek, in the county of Lancaster, Sep- 
tember 19, 1830. Of seven children, but three sisters 
and myself survived the death of our parents. I was 
the youngest of the four survivors. When I was six- 
teen months old, my dear mother died a few weeks 
after giving birth to another son, who deceased before 
the mother. Of course I have no recollection at all 
of my mother ; but I was told she was a pious and 
God-fearing mother, and when about to die, she put 
her hand lovingly on me, her baby boy, and prayed 
fervently that the good Father above would care for 
and bless the child she left. As in life obedient, so in 
death, she followed the Master, and ceased at once to 
suffer and to live. 

Before I was seven years of age, I lost my father 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 6 

also, by the following accident. He was a great 
sportsman, — fond of horses, dogs, guns, and all that 
pertains to a hunter's outfit. We were residing in the 
village of Washington, a few miles below Columbia, 
on the Susquehanna River, where father kept a hotel 
and store. A Mr. Linderman, a gunsmith, and my 
father arranged to go over the river duck-shooting. 
Arriving at the river's bank, where was their boat, 
Mr. L. laid the guns in, with their muzzles on the 
gunwale of the boat. My father went forward to 
unlock the boat from the tree. In the left side of the 
vest he wore, a hole had been burned by a spark from 
his cigar. As he bent forward, in the act of loosening 
the boat, Mr L. stepped into the boat, and struck the 
hammer of his gun with his foot, exploding the cap, 
and putting the entire load of heavy duck-shot into 
the abdomen of my father, through the burned hole 
in his vest. He instantly fell, exclaiming, " I am 
killed ! " 

I was with him at the moment, begging his consent 
to accompany them. Child as I was, I was stunned 
and dismayed at the accident, without being able to 
comprehend it in all its terribleness. 

Mr. L. dispatched me at once to our house with 
the mournful intelligence to father's wife, to whom he 
had been married but a few weeks. He was soon 
brought into his home, and laid on the floor of the 
parlor. His only utterance, after getting into the 
house, was the prayer, " God have mercy on me!" 



4 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

He died in less than an hour from the time of the 
accident. 

Although I remember many things that happened 
before the death of my father, and although I have an 
almost painfully vivid recollection of his sad death, I 
cannot recall a single feature, so as to form any idea 
as to his appearance. The shock upon my nervous 
system seemed to have completely effaced every 
outline of his form and features from my memory. 
Many years have passed since that calamity that 
robbed me of my father ; yet even to this hour I have 
an instinctive horror of firearms, and find it almost 
impossible to sight over a gun-barrel and pull the 
trigger without averting my gaze or closing my eyes. 

After the death of my father, the family was broken 
up, and my sisters, Elizabeth and Susannah, and my- 
self were taken by my uncle, Mr. Francis Kendig, my 
father's brother, and my oldest sister, Annie, was 
taken by Mr. Benjamin Barr, whose wife, Katie, was 
my father's sister. Soon after, my sister Lizzie fell 
from a cherry tree, and fractured her arm and re- 
ceived some other injuries, from which tetanus or 
locked-jaw ensued, and she survived the fall only two 
weeks. My sisters Annie and Susan both lived to 
adult age, married, and were blessed with children. 
They have deceased years since, leaving me the sole 
survivor of the family of nine. 

As told me by others, my parents were perfect anti- 
podes in temperament. My father was courageous, 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

active, nervous, wiry, and boisterously frolicsome. 
Liberal to prodigality, none wanted while he could 
help ; but, dying, he left his young family penniless. 
Mother was modest, meek, timid and retiring, court- 
ing privacy, and finding her true enjoyment in the 
midst of her little family and her immediate friends. 
My father never was so happy as when behind a horse 
that nobody else dared drive ; and it is said that his 
owning a horse added at once twenty-five dollars to his 
value. But poor mother rode with him in constant 
alarm, and many a time was known to beg, " Samuel, 
do let me get out ! I am sure we shall be killed ! " 

My people had no very definite idea of holiness of 
heart or life. Great social parties, with abundance of 
liquors, and sabbath visitings, were their especial de- 
light. All the families kept their side-board filled 
with liquors ; all the farmers served liquor to their 
harvest-hands ; so that very early I was made ac- 
quainted with the use of liquors. My cousin Samuel 
and myself used regularly to drain the glasses of the 
liquors that guests at my uncle's side-board would 
leave. One of my uncles belonged to an association 
that fined its members five dollars for every time they 
went home from the club headquarters sober enough 
to ride a horse. I am sorry to say he did not pay 
many fines. Though a frugal and hard-working peo- 
ple, and among the very best farmers in the country, 
they knew nothing about experimental religion. 

Like most boys at the age often andeleven, I grew 



b A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

tired of farm-life, and was anxious to get into the 
city. My oldest sister, Annie, married Mr. John 
Metzger, a merchant tailor of Lancaster City. It was 
finally determined that I should learn the tailor's 
trade, and so at the age of eleven and a half I was 
apprenticed to my brother-in-law until I was twenty- 
one. 

The Sabbath before the Monday I was to go to the 
city, I slept much of the day, so that it should pass 
away the quicker. Like hundreds of other boys when 
in the city, I found the bad, but not the good. While 
I worked hard and faithfully for my brother-in-law, 
[who kept three or four apprentices and several jour- 
neymen,] I soon drifted into the wider and more rapid 
currents of sin and sinners. I soon found my way 
into the ranks of the firemen, [then volunteer associa- 
tions,] and became a member of the "Sun" com- 
pany, and ran regularly with the " machine." I swore, 
smoked, and drank, spending much of my leisure 
time in the hose-house. I soon became the leader of 
a gang of young ruffians, who were the disgrace of the 
city, and the terror of the quiet and orderly in the 
community. The height of our ambition was to raise 
a false alarm of fire, and often plan for an actual one ; 
or have a fight with other gangs of boys as rude and 
rough as ourselves. 

For a little while I attended Sabbath-school in the 
Lutheran Church, and occasionally would attend 
divine service with my sister, who felt for me all the 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. / 

love and care of a mother. But my Sabbaths were 
generally spent in the saloons, the engine-house, at 
the river, the reservoir, or on the street. I soon 
became notorious ; and more than once have I over- 
heard others say of me, as I passed by, "There goes, 
a boy that will die on the gallows ! " 

Even at this time of extreme wickedness I had] 
periods of soul-sorrow. But I knew not what ailed 
me, nor did others ; for I and they said it was the 
"blues" Now I know it was conviction for sin. So 
pungent and powerful was this conviction, that for 
days I would not leave the house, would avoid all my 
associates, forsake the engine-house, and would not 
respond to the well-known signals of my crowd, as, 
they gave them in front of the house night after night, 
or Sabbath after Sabbath. These seasons passed, the 
boys would ask, as I mingled with them again, " Jack,, 
what's the matter with you? Going to be pious ? '* 
and similar remarks. 

The Rev. Mr. Geary ., of the Philadelphia Confer- 
ence, was, a part of this time, pastor of the Methodist 
Church in North Duke Street ; and, although all my 
religious bias was against the Methodists, when these 
periods of spiritual unrest came upon me, I would go 
to Mr. Geary's church ; and as he would appeal to 
the Cross, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, 
my boyish heart was melted, and my tears would fall, 
despite my efforts to prevent them ; and if the right 
influence, through the right person, had touched me 



8 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

at that time, from how much sin and sorrow I might 
have been saved ! But the truth is, I was so vicious, 
that, though but a stripling, few if any outside of my 
two dear sisters had any hope of my reformation, — 
much less of my salvation. My immediate relatives 
used to say, " Amos will make a very good man, or a 
very bad one ; " and the majority of them thought it 
would be the bad one. 

I became enamored with a desire to go to sea, and 
when but fifteen ran away with another boy. We 
left the city in our best Sunday clothes, on a Sabbath 
afternoon. My suit consisted of white pants, white 
stockings and pumps, with a green, swallow-tailed 
coat, white shirt, with collar a la Byron, and black 
necktie, sailor fashion. Missing the train, we started 
on foot, and traveled some twelve miles on the rail- 
road, stopping over night at the " Burden-hand Ho- 
tel." We had supper, asked for a bed, slept soundly, 
and arose in the morning much refreshed. Before 
breakfast I said to my companion, " We mustn't eat 
much, as we have but little to pay with." But he was 
wiser than I, for he said, " I'll eat all I can ; for I 
don't know when I'll have another chance." 

We "pooled" our cash, he becoming treasurer. 
With great assurance he walked up to the counter, 
and said, "Landlord, what is our bill?" The old 
gentleman, looking at us benevolently, said, " I guess, 
boys, you haven't much money, and I'll be easy on 
you. Give me twenty-five cents apiece." "But,'* 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 9 

responded the treasurer, " we haven't got so much as 
that I" "Then I'll not charge you at all." We had 
but thirty-seven and a half cents, and we lost one- 
third of that before we left the hotel. 

Here we boarded a freight train, and moved on 
toward Philadelphia, which, after several days of vary- 
ing adversity, we reached, having to sleep in open 
cars at night, and live on berries during the day. We 
were in want, "and no man gave unto us." In the 
city of P. we were forced to beg. My companion 
went into a bakery, and begged some bread. A half 
loaf was thrown him, which he eagerly grabbed ; and, 
with that under his arm, we sauntered along the street 
until we found a pump. Seating ourselves on the 
curb-stone beside it, we ate our bread and drank the 
water, and voted it the best meal of our lives. We 
were arrested, and taken back to Lancaster. 

Again I ran away, and went to Baltimore, and tried 
to enlist in the United States Navy ; but because I 
was a minor (being only sixteen), they would not 
enlist me. I then sought employment ; but failing in 
this, I enlisted as a soldier in the United States Army 
for the Mexican War. This was in the summer of 
1847. I was accepted as a recruit, and, with many 
others, was sent to Fort McHenry, a few miles from 
the city. 

I soon felt I was in the wrong place, and made up 
my mind to desert. The troop-ships to carry us to 
Vera Cruz had anchored off the fort, and we expected 



10 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

the embarkation would begin in a few days. What I 
did must be done quickly ; and, as it is my nature to 
act promptly, I formed my plans immediately. 

I had but one dollar and fifty cents in money, and 
a gold ring, the gift of a dear sister. I had made the 
acquaintance in the fort of a most desperate Balti- 
more rough, who knew every foot of the city and its 
environs. I told him my purpose, and said, " 111 give 
you all my money and my ring, if you'll put me on 
the Reisterstown Pike." " I'll do it," was his quick 
response. 

He arranged with the guard at a certain point to 
let us pass, " as it was our turn to run the mail;" 
[this "running the mail" meant to hang a beef's en- 
trail on your body, under your clothes, go into the 
city, and, getting it filled with whiskey, return with it 
in the same way, and drink it with your comrades.] 

We passed by the guard all right, and my guide 
safely piloted me to the agreed rendezvous, and left 
me. I walked all night with my regimentals on, and 
found my way after dark the next evening into the 
house of a relative in Reisterstown, Maryland, where 
I was carefully secreted for a season, until my dear 
and noble cousin, Samuel Kendig, of the Worthington 
Valley, came to see me, and, putting on my back a 
full suit of citizen's clothes, took me to his father's 
home, where I found a most cordial welcome. W 7 ith 
this same uncle I had made my home after the death 
of my father. (Since I left his home before, he had 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 11 

removed to Maryland.) A few days after this an 
armistice was declared, out of which grew peace. 

My uncle grew interested in me, and, after a year or 
more, procured me a situation in a wholesale liquor 
house in Baltimore, on Pratt Street, with a Portuguese 
merchant by the name of Pomeroy. Here I drank 
some, and learned something of the villainous com- 
pounds that enter into most of the brandies and wines 
that are sold in our American restaurants. 

I finally left here, and stood behind a bar, dealing 
out the terrible death-drink to every poor fellow who 
could pay for it. Many a morning these poor be- 
sotted men would come in soon after daylight, shiver- 
ing with the cold, and begging a drink, [for they had 
slept under a store-box, in a lumber-yard, on a freight 
car, or on the back-door steps of somebody's house,] 
and many a drink I gave the poor boys, without 
money or price. 

Quitting the saloon, I shipped as a boy before the 
mast on the packet barque " Chapin," running be- 
tween Baltimore and New Orleans. I was intent on 
reaching my mother's brother, Mr. Michael Barr, a 
well-to-do farmer, residing near Quincy, Illinois. 

Going on board the ship the evening before the 
morning of sailing, we dropped down the bay some 
three or more miles, and anchored for the night. 
Our crew were shipped, and every man of them 
brought on board drunk. I was the only sober one 
in the forecastle that night. I took on board with me 



12 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

two gallons of brandy. I was put on watch that night 
to keep the men from stealing a boat and pulling back 
to the city. I had time for reflection. By midnight, 
stupor, whiskey, and sleep had overpowered the crew, 
and nothing was heard but the flapping of the cord- 
age, rattling of the blocks, and splashing of the waves 
on the hull of the vessel. I thought of my mother, 
whom I never knew, and could but ask myself, would 
I be what I am and where I am had she lived ? My 
father, too, who doted on me ; what would he think 
could he see his only son here and now ? It was his 
purpose to have me a lawyer or a physician. I saw, 
in my fancy, my sister kneeling in her room ; for I 
felt she was constantly praying for me. I was in 
tears ! I prayed too ! I resolved to be better, to be a 
man, and disappoint them all ! Alas, for human 
weakness ! 

We reached New Orleans after about twenty days. 
I left the vessel, and worked on the levee for some 
time, and then shipped as a deck-hand, on the 
steamer "Joftn Adams," for St. Louis. Here again 
I worked on the wharf for some weeks, and then 
started in February to walk to Quincy, the home of 
my uncle, about one hundred and sixty miles north. 
My route lay through Missouri until I reached Pal- 
myra, at which point I crossed the great river into 
Illinois. There was a February thaw, the ice was 
brittle, and the people warned me of the danger in 
trying to cross. But I was not easily intimidate.d, 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 13 

and, arming myself with a pole some fifteen feet long, 
essayed to perform the perilous task, many watching 
me from the shore. The river at this place is over 
half a mile wide. I was successful until I neared the 
Illinois shore, when I went through ; but by struggle, 
presence of mind, and the Divine help, I swam out 
and reached the shore, my clothes frozen to my body. 
I begged a night's lodging in a cabin, which was 
readily granted, with true Western hospitality. My 
host put me to bed, and spent many hours of the 
night in drying my clothes. 

The next day I continued my journey, and having 
to cross a creek, much swollen, and double its ordi- 
nary width, with no bridge within miles of me, I 
improvised a boat out of a log that had lodged on 
the shore. Securing a pole for pushing and steering, 
I mounted the stern end of the log, and after some 
effort succeeded in floating it. When fairly under 
way, the rapid current caught it and commenced to 
roll it over, and of course, rolled me off. Now again I 
must swim for life ; and after a great effort I reached 
the north shore, quite exhausted, with my clothes 
again frozen. I sought the friendly shelter of another 
cabin, and received the same kind hospitality as in 
the former instance. 

The next day I succeeded in reaching my uncle's. 
He was as much surprised to see me as if I had 
risen from the dead ; for he supposed I was in New 
Orleans, from which place I had written him for aid, 



14 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

and he had favorably responded by letter. But 
there were neither railroads nor telegraphs then, and, 
tired of waitng and working in New Orleans, I had 
resolved to push on. He welcomed me cordially, 
and for a time I was comfortable. But I had habits 
that were unpleasant to my uncle, and my ways were - 
very offensive to him. On one occasion, in rebuk- 
ing me, he referred me to his own sons and the 
sons of a neighbor, remarking how quiet and orderly 
they were, and he thought I should try and be like 
them. I was impatient, and said, " Uncle, your boys 
have never been out of sight of the smoke of their 
own father's chimney. Send them through the same 
hell that I have been through, and if they don't come 
out worse burned than I am, then talk to me." 

From the beginning, not one who had anything to 
do with me knew my nature, nor how to manage me. 
I was whipped until my feet sopped in the blood of 
my body, as it ran into my shoes ; and scars from 
whipping are on my body now, never more to leave 
it ! Ignorant management of a child, will as often 
ruin it, as a vicious nature. Wiser and better parents 
would make gentler and holier children. 

I left my uncle after a year and a half, and went 
into Quincy, and entered the law office of Messrs. 
Browning & Bushnell, then among the most eminent 
barristers in the State of Illinois. I was poor, and so 
took a room and boarded myself, bread and milk 
being my staple diet. 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 15 

After some time I re-visited Lancaster, Pennsylva- 
nia. Getting with my old companions, I was soon 
under the influence of drink, and for days scarcely 
drew a sober breath. I made up my mind that would 
never do. I must leave if I would save myself. 
Coming into my sister's house one afternoon, quite 
intoxicated, I passed into the room in which she was 
sitting. I took a seat. She spoke not a word, but 
burst into a flood of tears. I said, " Sister, you think 
it is all over with brother, don't you ? Never mind, 
— I'll be a man yet." 

The next morning at breakfast I announced my 
determination to go West again that night. To keep 
sober, I remained in the house all day. During the 
afternoon, my sister Annie came into the parlor where 
I was sitting, and drawing up a stool took a seat before 
me, resting her elbows on my knees and her face in 
her two hands, and, with her eyes fixed on mine, said, 
" My brother, do you not feel at times that you ought 
to preach?" "Why, Annie ! what do you mean! 
Such a wretch as me preach?" "Amos, I am sure 
God wants you for a preacher." 

She remained with me until midnight, and then 
went with me alone to the depot. When she kissed 
me good-by, she said, " Remember, wherever you are, 
I am praying for you three times every day." We 
parted. I returned to the law office in Quincy. 

From here I went to a sister of my mother's, in 
Iowa, Mrs. Judith GrorT; for I had now determined to 



16 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

make my home in that State, and practice law, the 
profession I had chosen in deference to my father's 
wishes, and my own predilections. My aunt wel- 
comed me to her home most cordially. She resided 
in Iowa County, a mile from Marengo, the county 
seat, and about fifty miles west from Davenport. 
Here, for the first time in my life, I was thrown 
entirely under a direct and constant Methodist influ- 
ence, hearing no preachers of any other denomina- 
tion. The preachers were rude, and in some cases 
illiterate, but simple-hearted, deeply pious, and ter- 
ribly in earnest. As a young lawyer, coming fresh 
from the East, I found much to laugh at and ridicule, 
in these messengers of God. I was captious and 
conceited, and loved controversy with Christians and 
ministers, taking any side for the sake of argument. 
Because of this penchant, I greatly distressed my ex- 
cellent Christian aunt. 

It was quarterly meeting on the Marengo Mission, 
and the Rev. D. Worthington, Presiding Elder of the 
Iowa City District, was in charge of it. The meeting 
was held in Marengo, in the court-house. It com- 
menced on Friday night, as they usually did in those 
days, and continued until Sunday night. An excel- 
lent local preacher, Rev. " Father " Hestwood, from 
another part of the district, was present to aid the 
elder. My aunt attended, and invited the elder and 
Mr. Hestwood to tea on Saturday. She told me they 
were coming, and begged me for her sake not to get 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 17 

into controversy with them, but to behave myself. I 
promised to respect her wishes. 

They came ; and, after tea, Father Hestwood 
drew his chair near to me, and asked, "Are you a 
Christian ?" I looked at my aunt. She looked at 
me with a troubled countenance, and I simply an- 
swered, "No, sir." "Why not?" was the next ques- 
tion. " Well, I suppose the time has not yet come." 
" Don't you think you had better do something for 
your soul?" "Yes, sir." "Will you come to the 
meeting to-night?" "I expect to." "Well, suppose 
you begin a new life, by uniting with the church on 
probation ? " " Well, I don't know but I will." "Will 
you join the church to-night, if an opportunity is 
given?" "Yes, I will." 

My aunt was distressed. After prayer with us, they 
left, and aunty said, " O, Amos ! what did you say 
that for?" "Say what?" "Why, that you would 
join the church : you know you don't intend to do 
it." "But I do; and if I live to get there, and an 
opportunity is given, I shall join the church. But 
please tell me what I must do." So utterly ignorant 
was I, that I had no idea of the steps necessary to the 
deed. She instructed me ; and it seemed strange to 
me that by giving the minister my hand, I became a 
member of the church ! I went to the meeting at 
night, and took a seat in the extreme back part of the 
room. The sermon over, the altar was presented. No 
one went forward for prayers. Then an invitation was 



18 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

given to unite with the church. With less emotion 
than I have now, as I pen these lines, I arose and 
went forward and extended my hand to the minister ; 
then the full heart, that had held its sorrows pent up 
for twenty-one years, was broken ! God seemed to 
open the soul's gate, and I poured out my grief in an 
agony of tears ! From this moment I was a sincere 
penitent, and an earnest seeker of Jesus, the sinner's 
friend. This was in early January, 1852. I sought 
earnestly for five weeks, and on the 8th of February I 
was numbered with the saved. 

[Here and now, I wish to record my vote in favor 
of retaining forever that peculiarity of our Methodistic 
economy, that allows and invites souls desiring to flee 
from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their 
sins, to join the communion of saints as seekers of 
religion. It was the hook by which grace caught me ; 
the " gang-plank " up which I walked to reach the 
deck of the good old ship of Zion ; the life-preserver 
by the aid of which I floated and swam from sin's 
dark and dangerous waters into the haven of a- blessed 
peace. It was the sheet-anchor by which I was 
securely held amid the tempest of passion, appetite, 
and unbelief ! I will praise God now and forever for 
the probationary scheme of the Methodist Church. 
If others have been injured by it, I have been saved 
by it ! But for it, I would to-day be numbered with 
the lost ! Devoutly do I hope and pray it will never 
be surrendered by the church !] 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 19 

The Protestant Methodists had been holding a 
meeting for a week, and not a soul was converted. 
On Sabbath night, the last night of the meeting, 
after an uncommonly poor sermon, the altar was 
again presented. I seemed never conscious of exer- 
cising any volition in the premises. I could never tell 
how I got to that backless bench that was the substi- 
tute for an altar-rail. The first thing of which I seemed 
to be conscious was the fact that I was kneeling at 
that bench ! The next thought was, " They are all 
laughing at you ! " I looked up : all about me were in 
tears. My head fell, and I too was in tears. I cried, 
"O God, for Christ's sake, save me! Save me!" 
Prayers were offered, and after some thirty or more 
minutes it seemed as though every bone in my body 
had been removed. I sank into a state of utter pros- 
tration ; my struggle of mind ceased ; I felt a quiet ? 
calm, subdued feeling such as I had never felt before ; 
I looked upon the people who surrounded me ; I 
loved them, oh, how tenderly ! Never did they look 
so beautiful. They asked me, "Are you converted?" 
" I am sure I don't know what it is, but I never, never 
felt so deep a peace as I feel now ! My poor, tired 
heart ; how it rests ! " This was the first time that I 
had thus publicly knelt at the altar, and thus confessed 
my sins and asked their help ; and this first time God 
saved me ! Without doubt, had I done it before, I 
would have been saved before. 

I went home to my aunt's believing I was con- 



20 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

verted. As early as two o'clock on Monday morning, 
I awoke in my bed with the thought, I am not con- 
verted ! Instantly this mental colloquy ensued : "I was 
converted last night." " No, you were not; you were 
deceived." "Well, but I certainly felt as I never felt 
before." "True; and you said you were converted, 
and thus you lied to the people and lied to the Holy 
Ghost." " Well, but surely I was converted. What 
gave me the peace I had if God did not forgive me?" 
" Oh, it was a false peace. All who are converted 
shout. You did not shout ; therefore you are not 
converted." 

The argument was too much for me. My doubts 
and mental agony increased. So great was my dis- 
tress of mind that by four o'clock on that cold and 
stormy ninth of February I had left my bed and the 
house, and, going into the stable, I knelt between the 
horses, pleading with God for mercy. How long I 
remained in the stable I cannot tell ; but shortly be- 
fore daylight the cold drove me to the house, and, 
while kindling the fire, my aunt awoke, and inquired, 
"What are you doing? Why are you up so early?" 
With a flood of tears and bursting grief, I told her, 
" I lied to all of you last night, and deceived the peo- 
ple. I said I was converted, and was not." " But 
why do you think you were not converted?" "All 
who are converted shout. I did not shout, and I was 
therefore not converted ! " 

She arose, and did what she could to comfort me. 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 21 

After breakfast, she said, " You had better go down to 
Marengo, and talk with the ministers \ they are at 
Brother Downer's." 

In the face of a blinding north-west snow-storm, I 
walked that mile, insensible to its fierceness, because 
of my mental suffering. Never before or since have 
I had such an agony of mind ! Knocking at Mr. 
Downer's door, I was soon admitted into a warm 
room, and, if possible, warmer sympathies. One of 
the ministers asked me at once, u How do you feel 
this morning, Brother Kendig?" I told how I had 
lied and deceived them all ; and how sorry I felt. I 
was really sincere at the time, and thought I was con- 
verted \ but I feared I had sinned against the Holy 
Ghost ! Famous soul-doctors were those old Meth- 
odist preachers ! They sang, — 

"Alas ! and did my Saviour bleed? 
And did my Sovereign die?" etc., 

and theu knelt in prayer. While the Rev. Mr. Mande- 
ville was wrestling with God, in my behalf, light came, 
the darkness disappeared, "The Invisible appeared 
in sight, and God was seen by mortal eye " ! The 
enemy was put to flight, the blood cleansed, the Spirit 
witnessed, the angels sang, and my soul magnified the 
Lord ! From that day to this, I have never doubted 
my conversion. Amid all my struggles and conflicts 
in those after years, I could never be driven from that 
conscious experience. From that hour to this, I have 



22 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

held up Jesus as an ample Saviour for the worst of 
sinners ! Glory to God ! I have been consciously 
saved from then until now. 

I wondered why I had not been saved before, it 
was so simple ! Why had not some one told me 
earlier how to submit to God? Why had they not 
told me that the tears, and struggles, and confessions, 
and agonies of soul, and horror of self that I felt, and 
courted, could not save me ! I must surrender to 
God, ("For his servant ye are to whom ye yield your- 
selves servants to obey,") and honor Him, by believ- 
ing the record He has given of His Son, and do His 
will, by " believing on Him whom He hath sent ! " 
Such was my joy, my wild delight, my profound 
knowledge of my changed condition, that I wanted 
to tell every man whom I met, of "Jesus and his 
love." Indeed, I did tell them ; for my heart was so 
full, I must speak or it would break. Tears and 
smiles, praises and testimony, exhortation and en- 
treaty, were all strangely mingled in my joyous efforts 
to exalt the Son of God, and declare the Father's 
love ! 

Almost simultaneously with this blessed saving, 
came the conviction, " Go preach my Gospel " ! 
Here I parleyed, " How can I give up the interests 
of my clients, and the cases in my hands ? How give 
up my hope of political preferment? How can I 
preach? I am not educated, and know nothing of 
the Bible." Still the impression held me as in a vise. 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 23 

Again arid again I promised the Lord if certain things 
could be brought about, I would say no more, but at 
once preach. These accomplished, I would submit 
other conditions. At last I said, " Now, Lord, if 
Brother Murphy tells me he has the conviction I 
ought to preach, I will believe my call, and go at 
once." 

Brother Murphy was a very pious exhorter of much 
ability, who has since given his own son to the min- 
istry. The very next Sabbath, at the end of class, 
Brother Murphy said, " Brother Amos, I guess I'll 
walk up with you to Aunt GrofT's." " I shall be glad 
of your company," I answered, with trembling in my 
heart. We had walked but a short distance, when he 
came up near me, and, putting his arm in mine, said, 
" I want to ask you a question, and wish you would 
be candid with me, as we are here all alone, and no 
one need know anything about it, have you not felt 
you ought to preach?" My only answer was, " Why, 
my brother, what do you mean?" "Well," he an- 
swered, " I have had the impression firmly in my 
mind that God intends you for the ministry !" The 
last prop was gone, the last condition met, and I 
stood silent and dumb before God. I then opened 
to this brother my heart. He, with great wisdom, 
tenderness and love, urged me not to refuse nor 
falter, but to advance as God opened the door. 

The Rev. Strange Brooks, preacher in charge of 
the Mission, brought the matter before the class, and 



24 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

on their affirmative vote gave me a license to exhort, 
March 28, 1852. I at once gave myself up to the 
work, going wherever I was wanted> or a door was 
opened ; and so great was my zeal, that when there 
was no invitation, I made openings for myself, by 
holding meetings in school-houses and private dwell- 
ings. Many times I would walk from eight to fifteen 
miles a day, and hold from two to four meetings. 
Sometimes I walked twenty miles before breakfast to 
reach an appointment. At times, too, I would be 
•obliged to climb leaning trees, from whose tops T 
might leap streams, so as to meet my engagements. 
i was at it, all the time, in season and out of season. 
Many tried to dissuade me, calling me a fool for 
giving up my profession and prospects for the saddle- 
bags and poverty of a Methodist preacher. Others 
ridiculed me, and said, " He is a new convert ; his 
zeal won't last long." But, thank God, it has lasted! 
The same zeal and love that moved me then, moves 
me now ; and, I doubt not, will unto the end. From 
the hour of my conversion my practice has been, the 
greatest good to the greatest number in the quickest 
time ; and from then until now, whatever I had to do 
for God's church, I did with my might. I seem 
constantly to hear a voice saying unto me, " Kendig, 
be in earnest, the time is short ! " 

I at once gave up my law, sought a home for the 
summer with a Mr. John Richardson, of Honey Creek, 
in Iowa County, whose words of encouragement and 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 25 

kindness to the orphan boy can never be forgotten. 
In Mrs. R. I found a mother, devoted and loving, 
watching my unfolding, as intensely interested as 
though I had been of her own blood. I worked on 
the farm for my board and washing, but all the spare 
time, and all the Sundays, I was at meeting, exhort- 
ing, speaking, singing or rejoicing. My whole soul 
was on fire for God ! I was on the wing for eternity ! 
My constant thought and prayer was, how can I reach 
the people? 

The Fourth Quarterly Conference for the Mission 
was held on the camp-ground at North Bend, where I 
was duly licensed to preach, and recommended to the 
Iowa Annual Conference, as a suitable person to be 
received into the traveling connection. My license 
to preach bears date June 26, 1852, and bears the 
official signature of Rev. David Worthington, Presid- 
ing Elder of the Iowa City District. When this bit of 
paper was handed me, that gave me the consent of 
the church to preach, I retired into the woods to weep 
and pray. I was so ignorant, I knew so little of the 
church, her doctrines and usages, and really nothing 
about the Bible, that I felt, unless God specially inter- 
posed in my behalf, I should utterly fail ! I attended 
the Iowa Annual Conference that met September 27, 
in Burlington. Bishop Ames had just been elected to 
the Episcopal office the May before, and now visited 
Iowa for the first time, officially, as President of this 
Conference. 



26 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

I received my first appointment to Anamosa Mis- 
sion, Jones County, in the Dubuque District, Rev. H. 
W. Reed, D. D., Presiding Elder. I can never forget 
the trembling with which I drew near to my new field 
of labor, and the awe and distressing sense of responsi- 
bility that weighed me down, as on that memorable 
Saturday afternoon I drew in sight of the then little 
village of Anamosa, a solitary traveler, my entire 
worldly possessions the Indian pony I rode, and the 
few traps packed in my saddle-bags ! I knew not a 
soul, no one knew me ! a stranger among a strange 
people, come to deliver to them the message of God ! 
I was directed to a gentleman's house, Mr. Charles 
Crocker, who, with his good wife, gave me a minister's 
welcome. 

Here I was, fairly launched on the itinerant sea ! 
Should I be wrecked like thousands of others? or 
would I make the distant harbor on the other side? 
Who could tell? Two things conspired to give me 
success, from the first ; viz : I knew I was converted 
from that ninth of February. Therefore I was morally 
certain of two things : 1st. There was such a thing 
as conversion ; and 2nd. The worst of sinners may 
experience it. Had my own conversion been less 
clear and satisfactory, the result of my labors would 
have been very different. Again, I believed the doc- 
trines of the Holy Scriptures as taught by the Meth- 
odist Church. I believed them all, heartily, fully, 



A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 27 

constantly, and therefore I have preached them with 
all the earnestness and confidence of my soul. 

I am too stupidly dull, and too ignorannt, even at 
this day, — though I have been studying them for 
twenty-four years, — to discover wherein they contra- 
dict, or fail to harmonize with the word of God, the 
only infallible guide to faith and practice. From the 
beginning it has pleased God to give success to my 
ministry. It has been the one aim and ambition of 
my life to save souls. To God's praise I now bear 
witness, there has not been a barren year in all my 
ministry ; every year some souls were given me, and 
most of the years, very many, even hundreds in the 
different charges. I have failed many times, and 
have come short in many things, and have much 
occasion for my humiliation before God, and a strong 
sense of my need at this moment of the atoning 
blood ; but I have never shunned to declare the 
whole counsel of God, whether men would hear or 
forbear ; I have never considered for a moment in the 
preparation and delivery of my sermons, the question, 
" Will this please or offend ?" My question has been, 
" Is it God's truth ? Is it applicable now and here ? 
Does He want me to preach it?" I have always felt, 
if I was true to God and His message, whatever diffi- 
culties the delivering of that message might bring 
upon myself, my God was able, and would deliver me 
out of them all. 

And for the encouragement of the young minister 



28 A LOOK AT THE AUTHOR. 

under whose eye these lines may fall, I beg to affirm, 
He has never failed to deliver and bless me ! " Duty 
is ours, events the Lord's." I have had nearly all the 
lights and shades, the sweet and bitter, of the itinerant 
life ; and yet, with a heart overflowing with thankful- 
ness, I praise God for giving me a place, and counting 
me worthy to associate with those grandest and no- 
blest of heroes, the itinerant, homeless, Methodist 
preachers ! I hope to labor for many years yet, hold- 
ing up Jesus, "The mighty to save," assured, if at His 
coming I shall be found so doing, I shall hear from 
lips Divine, " Well done, good and faithful servant, 
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." 

Lord God, bless this experience to the saving of 
souls ; and keep me, thine unworthy servant, unto 
eternal life, for Jesus' sake. Amen. 



Pulpit Talks to Young Men. 



PULPIT TALKS TO YOUNG MEN. 



SHADOWED. 



" Thou God Seest Me." Gen. 16 : 13. 

tLL utterances of the Scriptures are clearly definite 
as to God's seeing. — " Hell is naked before 
him, and destruction hath no covering ; " " But all 
things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with 
whom we have to do ;" " God is light, and in Him is 
no darkness at all." Hence his sight is penetrating, 
searching, discovering, revealing, knowing, trying, pon- 
dering, weighing and absolutely all - pervading. A 
recollection of the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-present, 
all-power of the Supreme Being is to the righteous 
a cause of thanksgiving, yielding perpetual joy and 
comfort ; while to the unrighteous it should be an om- 
nipresent thought of sorrow and terror. All through 
the Bible, as well as in our lives, is the divine 
omniscience traceable in the clear and distinct detec- 
tion of particular sins, which the perpetrator thought 
concealed and buried. The awful question, " Where 
art thou?" reached Adam in his guilty hiding-place. 



32 SHADOWED. 

Achan, the thief, was shadowed through tribe, family, 
household, man and tent. From the day of battle 
God had shadowed him. " Went not mine heart with 
thee?"- His unseen but shadowing eye tracked the 
sinner, informed the heart, and exposed the covetous- 
ness and deception of Gehazi. The thought that God 
sees me should sober the drunkard, reform the thief, 
silence the swearer, purify the libertine, reclaim the 
outcasts, render truthful the liar and make honest the 
villain. - Young men, God neither needs policemen, 
chains or dungeon to keep the sinner sure. His eye 
is enough. With the known and practiced wrongness 
of your lives you tangle yourselves too surely to 
escape. 

I. Consider the beholder. 

" Thou God seest me." Not father, mother, sister, 
brother, wife, child, minister, employer or friend, but 
the supreme, eternal, holy, just, pure and good God, 
who dwells in glory ineffable, who formed you and 
endowed you with possibilities almost divine, with 
marvellous capacity for exquisite enjoyment or sor- 
row, who understands the blessedness of heaven and 
sorrows of hell, who alone can comprehend the soul's 
true worth and its imminent peril and the full mean- 
ing of that, to us, utterly incomprehensible word, eter- 
nity. He who has done so much to please the eye, 
charm the ear, gratify the taste, redeem the soul, and 
incite us to make our lives blessedly useful and mor- 
ally sublime ; it is that Being before whom angelic 



SHADOWED. 33 

purity veils its face, and in whose presence bows in 
adoring reverence ; it is He before whom the re- 
deemed and blood-washed millions of all kindreds, 
nations and tribes cast their crowns, and with hal- 
lowed joy cry, " Alleluia : the Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth." Fix this thought in your mind, my brother, 
that it is this God, " Whose eye runs to and fro in 
the earth," who " Cannot look upon sin, with allow- 
ance," who is " of purer eyes than to behold iniquity," 
before whom I walk and to whose constant gaze I am 
in my most secret thoughts or practices constantly 
acting. Let this thought burn into your soul, and 
you must flee to Christ for saving. 

II. What is the Object of His Vision ? 

It is "Me." He sees every beast, bird, reptile, in- 
sect, mountain, plain, forest, river, lake, sea, city ; all 
in heaven, hell, time and eternity, near or remote, to 
us visible or invisible, known or unknown, knowable 
or unknowable ; nothing escapes His eye : every spar- 
row that falls, every fish that dies, every slaughtered 
beast or expiring human being, pour their lives out in 
His sight. But He sees you as definitely and com- 
pletely as though you were the only object in the 
universe to be seen. No day so bright, no night so 
dark, no crowd so great, no city so. full, no forest so 
dense, no plain so remote, no ocean so great, that 
His eye is not shadowing you all the while. He saw 
you in the hidden chambers of your mind when you 
meditated your first wrong act, swore your first oath, 



34 SHADOWED. 

gave license to your first vile thought, when was com- 
mitted your first known sin, when was taken your first 
piece of tobacco, your first drink, and when for the 
first time you were drunk, when you sat at the gaming 
table and threw your first card, when you took that 
first thing that belonged to another and not you, when 
with blush of shame you stood for the first time before 
the harlot's door, when you profanated the Sabbath 
and had your first Sabbath's debauch. At all times, 
day and night, at home or abroad, in the good or evil, 
He shadowed you. Half the young men before me 
would be out of employment to-morrow if their em- 
ployers knew how and where they spent their hours. 
You may disguise yourself, as many do, and stealthily 
tramp the deserted streets in heelless slippers at un- 
seasonable hours ; you may change your apparel and 
deceive your friends ; you may hatch your crime in 
the privacy of your own heart, and filch your employ- 
ers' funds by unsuspected littles, but at any moment 
God could and does call out, " Hagar, what doest 
thou?" You had lost sight of him, had forgotten him 
when you sinned, but he both remembered and saw 
you. 

III. But why this Surveillance ? 

1. It is to grieve over the wrong in your life. What 
must your life be, when it makes the God of love 
regret your existence ? " "And it repented the Lord 
that he made man on the earth, and it grieved him at 
his heart." Said a young man to me, " I would no 



SHADOWED. 35 

more swear before my mother than I would cut my 
hand off." And yet he would not hesitate to swear 
before his Creator. Do your parents and loved ones 
plead for your restoration ? Are they pained at your 
conduct? Does your life disgrace them ? If this be 
true, what of God? Has he no claims? Hear what 
he says : "Do not this abominable thing that I hate ;" 
" and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel ; " 
" Forty years long was I grieved with this genera- 
tion ; " Jesus was " grieved for the hardness of their 
hearts;" "To think," says God, "that I have nour- 
ished and brought up children, and they have rebelled 
against me !" What do you think of the man who 
will abuse his parents, or villify his best friend ? How 
then appears your sinful course to God? 

2. He not only grieves over your course, but he 
sees it to condemn it. Your thoughts, words and acts 
are abhorrent to his nature and infractions of his law. 
He makes no excuse for sin, nor will he entertain 
any ; he gives you the ability to do the right, and 
expects you to do it ; his disapproval of your course 
has been flashed upon your mind, written upon your 
heart, thundered to your conscience, and punished, in 
part, in your life. How often in your wickedness you 
have stopped, hesitated, heard your own name called 
by the voice of the present God, asking what you did, 
and why you did it ? Such was its power and influ- 
ence that you vowed to do right and abandon wrong. 
When you left your home and came to this city, cut 



36 SHADOWED. 

loose from old associates and home influences, you 
determined to " see the elephant," and for that pur- 
pose associated with the cultured and refined in 
boating, racing, billiards and wine parties, or with the 
coarser and less responsible debauchees, who make up 
the society of the groggery and the pit of the theatre. 
He was then present, speaking ( to your soul in censure 
and declaring his utter detestation of your conduct. 
In the morning, at noon, in the evening, and now, at 
the midnight of your wrong-doing, how often you have 
heard His reproving voice in denunciation of your 
guilt. 

When you thought yourself alone he found you out, 
and, through the music of your attuned conscience, 
touched by the finger of the Infinite, has brought tears 
to your eyes, and sadness to your heart, as there were 
revived memories of childhood's innocency, the holy 
associations and influences of boyhood's home. You 
have been reminded of the shame and degradation of 
squandered substance and the sin-freighted months 
and years of your life, and you have been warned of 
the still greater danger ahead. Every wrong act, word 
and thought of your life, whether against others or 
yourself, He sees and condemns. 

" God is angry with the wicked every day," and do 
you wonder therefore, that the wicked are like the 
troubled sea that cannot rest? With this constant 
conflict going on within you, between your higher and 
lower self and between the wrong self and God you 



SHADOWED. 37 

can no more be at rest than the ocean under the 
lashing of the tempest. There is not one of you 
under my voice but is conscious of his guilt, and the 
evidence is found in your admission of it to yourself, 
in your desire for a better life, and your purpose to 
to make an effort for it, some time in the future. 

3. But he sees you in your purpose to reform and 
approves it. When you set back the glass and said 
no more for me ; when you threw down the cards and 
resolved to play no more ; when you swore that last 
blasphemous oath and vowed to refrain in the future ; 
when you stole that last dime, and with tears of sor- 
row pledged your honor and manhood you would take 
no more but would restore all ; when you desecrated 
God's day by unholy conduct and associations, and 
blushed at your own misconduct ; when you solemnly 
resolved, after due reflection, I am all wrong, and am 
determined to be all right and a man if I die ; when 
you settled that you would change your course and 
life ; when the first tear of penitence trembled in 
your eye, and with bended knee and sobbing voice 
you recommenced the long neglected prayers of your 
childhood, he was seeing you in approval, while halle- 
lujahs of praise burst from angelic lips over the prodi- 
gal's noble purpose. 

4. But he sees you to bless you in your coming. 
In that inimitable story of the Prodigal, the father is 
represented as seeing the son afar off coming toward 
him, and such was the joy and delight of his heart 



38 SHADOWED. 

that he ran to meet him. Mark, it was when the son 
had turned toward home the father met him. Some 
insist that we shall take the swine in also. No, gentle- 
men, the father took the boy when he left the hogs, 
not while he consorted with them. Jesus saves from 
sins, not in them nor with them. The Divine Father 
is constantly appealing to the two powerful motives, 
reward and punishment, His approval and displeasure, 
our own happiness or misery, to move us to do right. 
When we leave the wrong and begin to do right, turn 
from sin and toward holiness, He sees us and throws 
out the cable of promise, shoves out the life-boat, 
Christ, and aid us in gaining the shore of true, regen- 
erate goodness, by the pilotage of the Holy Spirit 
and the chart of His Word. By every promise He 
aids you in determining for the right ; he moves the 
church to stand as a life saving crew on the stormy 
shores of Time to rescue the endangered from the 
dark waters of sin. God will help you by the Son 
of His love, the grace of His Spirit, the word of His 
promise, the ministry of His mercy and the church 
of His sympathy. " We shall have a reporter there," 
so said a young man thoughtlessly as he was leaving 
home to attend a ball. A reporter was there, and a 
report was written, which is now before the Great 
Judge ; a report of every thought, word and deed, of 
vows to parents solemnly made and lightly broken, of 
violated pledges to live for Christ and not for the 
world. Where is the report written? On memory, 



SHADOWED. 39 

to be traced by conscience as it shall wake from its 
slumbers and recall wasted opportunities, slighted ad- 
monitions, abused mercies and disregarded warnings. 
When shall it be read ? When death thunders at your 
lifedoor ! Where will the report be read ? At the 
bar of God ! By whom ? The Father, God, the Sa- 
viour, Christ, the testifier, the Holy Ghost, angels, 
saints, devils, yourself ! Then will you shriek, " my 
God, shadowed, found out, condemned, and lost ! " 




DEAD BROKE. 



" And he fain would have filled his belly with the husks that 
the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him." Luke 15 :16. 

t YOUNG minister in Iowa broke down and 
started for home. Having no money he footed 
it. Tired and footsore he sat by the wayside when 
the stage passed, and he asked the driver to carry 
him a few miles, said he had no money, was asked 
for his Bible in pay, but refused to part with it. The 
stage passed on and left him. He was " dead broke" 
financially. There is a man with no money ; no mat- 
ter how much he had nor how much he spent, he is 
dead broke now. There is another man, whose 
promise to pay, nobody will accept, and whom nobody 
will trust ; even the saloon keeper has cast him off, 
he is dead broke. Yonder is a man wearing old 
clothes threadbare and silky, shivering because of 
insufficient clothing. The hair shoots through his 
crownless hat, toes protrude through the torn boots 
while the white flesh grins here and there through the 
gaping wounds of rent garments, and we say as our 
eye lights upon him dead broke. As you look at 
that man with purple skin, and the blue swelled veins 



DEAD BROKE. 41 

showing so clearly in his face dotted with hillocks of 
putrid matter, with nervous tremor and unsteady step, 
under rum's influences twenty hours out of every 
twenty- four, you say, " Poor fellow you are dead 
broke." And so I could fill the hour with the vary- 
ing pictures of our poor lost humanity. This prodi- 
gal's history in its darkness is the history of thousands 
of young men ; would to God it were so in its light- 
ness ! 

I. He had no money, and hence was financially 
dead broke. 

Once he had money, and a good deal, I judge ; but 
he did not earn it, the old man gave it to him. This 
shows the weakness of the father. If this young man 
had been made to work for money perhaps he would 
have spent it differently. An old man was asked how 
much he was worth, and responded, with a flood of 
tears, " Enough to damn all my children." Says an 
old adage, " A fool and his money are soon parted." 
Fortunes are usually the result of a lifetime of patient 
toil and prudence ; but the life-gatherings of ancestral 
self-sacrifice may be squandered in a year. Our wis- 
dom or folly is seen in that for which we spend our 
money and time, strength and character. This young 
man dressed extravagantly, drank deeply, gamed freely 
and treated promiscuously. He had no income, and 
the principal was soon exhausted. He spent it with 
women who cared less for him than for the adorn- 
ments his money bought them ; while with their be- 



42 DEAD BROKE. 

dizened charms they coquetted him into beggary. It 
is hard to be poor, but it adds severer pangs to that 
poverty to know that your own sins brought it upon 
you. The money you have spent for rum or tobacco, 
at the horse race, theatre or boat race, or on the 
painted harlots of the street, would have clothed your- 
self and wife and child, or father or mother, or helped 
on God's cause in the earth ; it would have lifted the 
mortgage from your home or bought you one, put 
books on your shelves in your library, paid pew rent, 
and put yourself and family neatly clad in God's 
house, among respectable people. But what return 
has it made you ? Want, sorrow, suffering, shame and 
remorse ! Of what earthly interest was it to you which 
horse beat, the black or the gray ? or which boat crew 
won? If you lose your money, who'll refund it? 
Suppose you win from your fellow? You rob him, 
because you take his money and give him nothing in 
return. "Ah !" you say, "if ever I make any more 
money, or once more get a start, I'll not spend it as 
foolishly as I did." You know what it is to be dead 
broke, financially. 

II. He had no credit, and hence was dead broke in 
reputation. 

When a man, young or old, will spend his money in 
sinful rioting and licentious indulgence, nobody will 
trust him, for the reason that his conduct has de- 
stroyed the basis of every man's credit : viz., confi- 
dence ; and this is founded on industry and frugality. 



* DEAD BROKE. 43 

An industrious and careful man may lose his money 
in a legitimate business venture, and there are plenty 
of great-hearted men who will put him on his feet 
again ; but if he will spend his money in sin and de- 
bauchery, he will be left to paddle his own boat. You 
will always have plenty to help you spend your money, 
drink the liquor, smoke the cigars, enjoy the drives, 
and attend the opera your money pays for ; but when 
you have spent it thus, and begin to be in want, as 
was this young spendthrift, you will find, as did he, no 
man will give unto you. They grew rich by robbing 
him, his money carried them over dull times, and by 
his prodigal munificence they were made glad. But 
times have changed ; he is down and they are up. 
They don't know him now, and to his appeal for the 
loan of only a farthing or a mite with which to buy 
food, they say, "No, you fool, why didn't you take 
care of your money when you had it?" A young man 
complained to me that he couldn't get trusted for a 
glass of liquor in a saloon where he had spent on an 
average a dollar a week for five years. I say a man is 
dead-broke when he can't get trusted for a glass of 
rum. A man of reputation, when hard up, as any 
man may possibly be, will find a friend to tide him 
over, if he has credit ; but with no money or credit, 
surely he is to be pitied. But look at it. A young 
man spends his weekly earnings at the billiard table, 
bowling saloon, theatre, horse race, or card table, 
smokes it in tobacco or drinks it in whiskey, and then 



44 DEAD BROKE. 

comes to me to borrow. I feel sorry for him, but I 
must say no. I think he means well, but he has 
promised a thousand times before and broken it. 
How can I trust him now? When he will quit his 
old associates, leave his old haunts, turn a square 
corner, and about face for manhood and God, I say, 
" Yes, I can trust you now, and I'll do what I can to 
put you firmly on your feet." 

III. He had no friends, and hence was socially 
dead broke. 

To have neither money nor credit is bad enough ; 
but to be friendless, who can gauge the depth of 
misery in that word? My boyhood's experience in 
Philadelphia can never be forgotten. Moneyless, 
creditless and friendless, I thought my boyish heart 
would break ! Thousands were about me, passing 
to and fro ; but none knew or cared for me, the 
orphan boy. This woe of friendlessness was so keenly 
felt by the suffering Saviour, that, in prophetic vision, 
he exclaims : "Thou hast put away mine acquaintance 
far from me ; lover and friend thou hast put far away 
from me ; yea, mine own familiar friend in whom I 
trusted which did eat of my bread hath lifted up his 
heel against me." Stand on the dock when the for- 
eign steamer arrives, as I have done, and see the emi- 
grants as they leave her, — some to meet friends who 
await them, while others cry from sheer loneliness, 
and know not what to do or which way to turn ; and' 
thousands from first to last have fallen into the hands 



DEAD BROKE. 45 

of villains, and gone to speedy ruin. " The friendship 
of the world is death," says a high authority. Too 
many friends are like the moth : while the light shines 
they throng you, but when darkness comes they disap- 
pear ; or like the leech, stick and suck while there is 
blood in you, or- until they are full, then drop off. 
Such friends care only for what you have, not what 
you are ; doing seeming honor to you, not because 
they like you, but for the something you control. How 
many have ridden into political power and office on 
the backs of men for whom they cared no more than 
beasts of burden. They have courted your friendship 
only because they could use you to serve their selfish 
ends. True friendship is founded on character, and 
is the growth of years. True friends are hard to find, 
and when once made should be treated as your health 
or morals. You must expect, if you persist in wrong- 
ness, madly squandering your substance of money, 
talent, time and influence in riotous living, that your 
truest friends will leave you. * 

IV. He had neither food nor shelter, hence he was 
homelessly dead broke ! 

This certainly is the climax of suffering on the ma- 
terial side. Once a good home, now homeless. Once 
good clothes, now in rags. Once plenty to eat, now 
starving. Some men don't come to this church at all, 
and others only at night, because they fancy their 
clothes not good enough. Why, bless you ! I have 
preached the gospel to intelligent audiences when the 



46 DEAD BROKE. 

knees of my pantaloons had great patches on them, 
and I was as good then as now. Ay ! and I would 
rather be seen going into God's house with patches 
than into sin's ways with broadcloth. Why? because 
in God's service more than one man has changed his 
rags for broadcloth, while sin will sooner or later strip 
you of your broadcloth and put you in rags. I preach 
to men, not to clothes. In these times I know many 
families are on short rations, and clothes are worn now 
as respectable that five years ago would have gone 
into the rag bag. Only once a week can they afford 
meat now. God bless them, how I pity them ! Go 
to your markets, and see how eagerly its cast-off mat- 
ter is sought and greedily devoured. Then go up 
into the garrets and down into the cellars, and see the 
pale-faced, hollow-eyed sufferers whose hearts leap for 
joy at the return of these garbage gatherers. It is a 
literal fact, that in the early gray of morning or dusk 
of evening, men, women, and children quarrel with 
each other and the dogs over the wasted refuse of the 
city. In nine cases out of ten, the street beggar is a 
fraud ; meritorious want starves before it will beg. A 
child was dying, a mother in poverty and rags was sit- 
ting by his side weeping at her prospective loss. The 
dear boy looked into her face with joy, and said, 
"Mamma, I am glad that I am going to die." "Why, 
darling?" "Because there will be more for you and 
sissy to eat when I am gone." You yet have shelter 
and covering ; but if some continue on the road they 



DEAD BROKE. 47 

are now traveling they will soon reach the foodless 
station, and then the houseless one is but a short way 
ahead. Brother man, stop, for your soul's sake ! 

V. He was wicked, and hence was dead broke 
morally. 

What broke him ? Fast living, wrong doing ; in a 
word, sin. And if you don't give it up, sure as you 
hear me, it will break you, sooner or later. Sin made 
him dissatisfied with home and its influences, took 
him into a far country, made him fast, a spendthrift 
and drunkard, the companion of villains and harpies, 
robbed him of his money, credit, friends, food, cloth- 
ing and shelter. Right thinking and right acting 
never brought a man to such a pass. I challenge his- 
tory to show an instance in which a man has brought 
such ruin on himself by serving God. If he had been 
right at heart, serving God instead of Satan, doing 
right instead of wrong, how different would the end 
have been. He did as all do who continue in the 
wrong, went from bad to worse. He took for a motto, 
" Eat, drink and be merry." He gave loose rein to 
his appetite, swore, danced, drank, caroused, having a 
blue Monday, green Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Ascen- 
sion Thursday, Good Friday, spreeing Saturday and 
loafing Sabbath ; little dreaming in his hilarious mad- 
ness and prodigal wickedness how near dead broke he 
was, and how much suffering he must go through on 
earth, to say nothing of eternity. And some of you 
are traveling in his footsteps, you are on the same 



48 DEAD BROKE. 

road and train, and will most surely be brought to the 
same ruin unless you stop very soon. 

There are men in your city who had position and 
influence, character, property and good companion- 
ship, who are without any of these now. They once 
wore good clothes and attended the house of God. 
They don't now. Why? Because of sin. It has 
taken honor, influei^e and manhood from them, and 
left them on the curbstone, in the police station, 
prison or almshouse, dead broke. Why, some of you 
are so tremendously dead broke that you have con- 
templated suicide. Some of you can say, in the 
language of the dead-broke Altamont, " My principles 
have poisoned my friends, my extravagance has beg- 
gared by boy, my unkindness has murdered my wife, 
and is there yet another hell? Oh, thou blasphemed 
yet most indulgent Lord God ! hell is a refuge if it 
hides me from Thy power." The man who sees the 
right, and knows the right, and believes in the right, 
but has no courage or strength to do it, or who will 
allow himself to be laughed or cursed out of his con- 
victions and efforts for the right, and set adrift on the 
sunless, moonless, starless waters of unbelief, to be 
caught by the current of appetite, will be sure to be 
found on the ocean of indulgence, wrecked and dead 
broke. Terrible as was the condition of this young 
prodigal, he had what only a few of you have, the 
candor to confess his sin, the resolution to reform, and 
the determination to do it at once. He had a father 



DEAD BROKE. 49 

and a home, and he resolved to see that father and 
that home, and make a clean breast of it. And he 
did it ; and but for this, the one manly act of his life, 
I should say dead, instead of dead broke. Will you 
come to-day? Your reason says, " Do it." Your 
conscience says, "Do it." Your own sense of self- 
respect says, " Do it." Your convictions of safety 
say, " Do it." Your broken-hearted wife and suffer- 
ing children say, " Do it." The parents whom you so 
long and deeply wronged plead, "Do it." And the 
good God above you cries, " How can I give thee 
up?" "Return unto me." Infinite love, as it weeps 
and dies upon the Cross, prays, " Father, forgive 
them, they know not what they do." Yes, you come ! 
Thank God, manhood, right and heaven triumph ! 



TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 



" What sayest thou of thyself? " John 1 : 22. 

J|Fjf HIS was the question put by the captious Pharisees 
~*9 to John, and his answer evinces the rare virtues 
of frankness and courage. To resent an insult, or rush 
into battle under the inspiration of wrong or martial 
music, is a courage of which cowards are capable. 
To enter the prize ring or fight a duel requires just 
such courage as the bovine or bull dog is capable of; 
but to see a wrong and expose it, a fashionable sin 
and withstand it, a personal weakness and overcome 
it, a conscious wrong and confess and abandon it, a 
temptation and resist it, requires a frankness and 
courage of which an intelligent moral being only is 
capable. Examine your own selfhood, and ascertain 
the quality and quantity of your stock in trade. 

I. Are you willing to do this? Dare you take 
account of your own stock? 

There are two with whom we should be on terms of 
most familiar intimacy, — ourselves and God. Yet 
with no two are we less acquainted. Self is a neces- 
sary companion, and I should be frank and brave with 
myself. It is easy to take account of others' stock, to 



TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 51 

see them in all lights and at all angles except the true 
one, for this feeds malevolence, gratifies jealousy, and 
is the seasoning of too many conversations. God 
complains, " My people do not consider." We are 
afraid of solitude and solitary reflection. To be shut 
up with self would be to some of you the worst of 
hells. Brave in company, we are cowards when 
alone. How many years since you have taken ac- 
count of stock, — ten, fifteen or forty ? Few will dare 
open the books, look over the stock, and make an 
honest invoice to-night. The nearer a man is to con- 
scious bankruptcy, the greater the desire to cover up. 
It is the childish game of whistling to keep the 
courage up. To throw the cloak of respectable ex- 
ternalism over a heart filled with corruption will not 
purify it any more than to hide a cancer will prevent 
its eating out the life. This game of hide-and-seek 
you play with yourself is a most dangerous one. To 
study myself, take an account of stock, is the first step 
toward solvency and assured rightness. Let me intro- 
duce you to yourself, take an account of assets and 
liabilities, hold a council wtih your creditors, and see if 
you can meet the claims entailed upon you by self- 
hood, human brotherhood, and the Divine Father 
above. Are you willing to know yourself? 

II. Have you the humility to confess your wrongs ? 

If unwilling to hunt for a wrong in ourselves, still 
more unwilling are we to confess it. The sin of the 
garden did not die out with the garden, for many still 



52 TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 

use the fig leaves. How often we hear, " I'll never 
confess: I'll die first!" Why? Because confession 
argues weakness, ignorance or wickedness, and we are 
unwilling to think this of ourselves, or have others 
think it of us. You know your inward life is a lie to 
yourself, and your outward life is a lie to others. Do 
you confess it? Not at all. If you do not stoutly 
deny the charge, you excuse or defend it. This is 
an almost universal practice. Every man who sins, 
wrongs three parties. You wrong self; therefore con- 
fess to yourself. Say, with Pharaoh's butler, "I do 
remember my faults this day." The prodigal, when 
he came to himself, said, " I have sinned." It is both 
difficult and uncommon to be honest with one's self; 
and yet honesty with self is the basis of honesty with 
others. This is a result of that. If I do not always 
do right, because I am right, and therefore love the 
right, I am open to do the wrong, — when the motive 
shall be sufficient. No man decieves or defrauds an- 
other who does not first decieve and defraud himself. 
Theft, murder, arson, larceny, fraud, or sensuality are 
in us before they move against others. Tweed was 
defrauding Tweed before he began to defraud others ! 
You stole from yourself before you stole from others. 
"Truth in the inward parts " alone will save us. 

But I wish to discuss the thought on higher ground 
than mere temporalities. A man not true to himself, 
may still be a good physician, lawyer, clerk, mechanic 
or servant ; but in so far as he is untrue to his own 



TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 53 

selfhood, in this higher sense is he untrue to his social 
obligations, in the highest claim that soul can make 
on soul. You must "love God," and this is fidelity 
to self, in order to "love your neighbor," which is 
fidelity to them. You confess to yourself or you will 
never confess to another ; you repent before self or 
you never repent before God. To what end are you 
using the stock a beneficent God has entrusted to your 
care? Are you squandering in rioting and excess, 
effeminate inactivity or damning pleasures that con- 
sumes body, health, brain, time, energy, influence and 
opportunity, thus using up the very capital itself, with 
which God set you up ? Is your life outward from 
God and downward toward degradation ? How much 
of the original stock have you unimpaired? God 
wants " preferred " stock. No watering of it at that 
board. You have wronged others, therefore confess 
to them. Sin so distorts and magnifies, that nothing 
seems real or natural, " Conscience makes cowards 
of us all." You entertained false views of your neigh- 
bor and did him wrong. When you found out your 
mistake why did you not confess it to him ? Sin gives 
false views of privilege and duty, makes us secretive 
and selfishly defiant. Many have *suicided, rather 
than confess a wrong that would have been forgiven. 
Many a woman has gone broken-hearted to the grave, 
rather than humble herself to confess a mistake to 
the man she loved dearer than life. There are to-day 
all over this earth outcasts from home, whose con- 

5* 



54 TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 

sciences goad them to madness, because unwilling to 
confess a sin to loving parents, who would be glad to 
kiss away the red tear-line of sin's burning. More 
husbands and wives have been divorced and children 
disgraced by this mad refusal to confess to each 
other, than any other one cause. My man, have you 
enough humility in stock to confess to father, mother, 
wife, child or friend, " I have sinned against thee " ? 
You asked some one to take the first drink, play his 
first card, swear his first oath ; you gave him the 
downward push, can you confess to him and try to 
pull him back again? If all would do it, what a 
reunion of estranged friendships ! what a healing of 
broken hearts ! what a re-kindling of old loves ! Do 
it, and God's sun of to-morrow will rise upon the 
world revelling in the delirium of a new-found joy. 
You have wronged God, therefore confess to Him. 
You have failed to meet His reasonable requirements, 
robbed Him of time, means, service, honor, glory, 
used the capital He gave you upon His enemies, 
concocted treason and entertained traitors. Doing 
business on His capital, and now denying His claims, 
you confess indebtedness, but refuse to pay the first 
instalment by praying, or the over-due interest by re- 
pentance. 

III. Have you manhood enough to desire reform? 

Men swear, drink, cheat, and confess it wrong, yet 
will not promise to quit it. We " See the right, and 
yet the wrong pursue." What is this but weakness 



TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 55 

and cowardice ? a fearing to accept the order lest you 
have not the stock in trade to fill it ? You are near to 
bankruptcy, and have not enough of the real grit of 
true manhood to throw the line of desire on God's 
life-boat of grace to carry you through the surf of ap- 
petite and across the waters of wrong into the harbor 
of desired and known rightness and safety. Stretch 
out the old cloth of desire, paddle until you get before 
the winds of love, and on this shoreward tide you will 
be carried to the island of hope and stand secure on 
the "Rock of Ages/' as millions have been before you. 
If you have no desire or confidence to try and reform, 
you go down with accelerated speed, and in God's 
commercial bulletin of to-morrow you will be rated "un- 
sound." Will you placard yourself as "The man who 
dares not do right"? It is noble to see a man stop- 
ping, reflecting, confessing, and, with the inflowing 
consciousness of wrong done and lived, say, " All 
wrong. No farther on this line. This is the last. I 
quit now." It is noble to see a man whose mani- 
fested life is respectable, yet who is inwardly con- 
scious that he is not measuring up to his own ideas of 
privilege and duty to self, others, and God, asking, 
"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" and then 
resolutely and manfully set about doing it at once. 
It is grand to see the young man for whose return a 
father waits and a mother prays, over whom sisters 
and brothers weep, and to whom still clings lovingly a 
deceived and broken-hearted wife, rise, under a deep 



56 TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 

sense of the pains he has made and wrongs done, and, 
with the high impulse of re-enkindled manhood, wipe 
his eyes, shake off his rags, turn from the sins that 
disgraced him and the haunts that ruined him, and 
return to love, home, welcome, purity and heaven. 

IV. Have you the candor to avow this desire pub- 
licly? 

There are men in this city who are without courage 
to come to church, because in their paroxysms of sin- 
ful madness they spoke against the church. They 
dare not avow their desire for religion, because once, 
with lying bravado, they ridiculed it. You are not 
ashamed to drink or swear ; why are you ashamed to 
pray? You are not ashamed to sing indecent dog- 
gerel; why are you ashamed to sing hymns? You 
are not ashamed to be seen with the lecherous lib- 
ertine, profligate, gambler or scoffer ; why are you 
ashamed to be with the pure and good? You are 
not ashamed to enter the saloon and the door of her 
house whose steps lead to death, and take hold on 
hell ; why are you ashamed to be in the prayer-meet- 
ing? You are not ashamed to be found at the rat 
pit, dog fight, horse race and theatre ; why are you 
ashamed to be in the church ? You are not ashamed 
to wear the livery of the devil ; why ashamed to wear 
the livery of heaven? You are not ashamed to be 
known and called a sinner and an unbeliever ; why are 
you ashamed to be called a saint or professor ? To 
sin is human ; to persist in it is devilish. To see 



TAKING ACCOUNT OF STOCK. 57 

wrong proves wisdom ; to feel it argues conscience ; to 
abandon it declares a true nobility and high manhood. 

V. Have you the courage to execute this desire now 
and here? 

Many a delay between the desire and the doing, 
ruins forever. Hell's broad way is paved with good 
but broken promises. If I had as many hundred dol- 
lar bills as you have broken resolutions of reformation 
on your souls, I would buy a home for each of you, 
and have a good one left for myself. Between duty 
and sin millions vibrate like a pendulum, and tens of 
thousands who said "I will," sat still and did it not. 
To the real man, who means to do an honest business 
and show a saving profit in the end of life, there are 
but two questions : to know duty, and do it. Desire 
for reform and avowal of it to yourself and others de- 
grades you the more if you don't do it. This step is 
the key stone to the otherwise tottering arch. This is 
the sheet-anchor by which you must warp yourself 
over the bar of moral and spiritual wrongness into the 
peaceful waters of spiritual rightness. I appeal to 
each, "What sayest thou of thyself?" Say, brother 
man, will you to-night take God for your father, Christ 
for your Saviour, the Holy Ghost for your comforter, 
the Bible for your guide, the church for your helper, 
and heaven for your home ? Have you enough of all 
that tends to make you good and great, of frankness, 
humility, desire, avowal, and energy to do, to dare and 
achieve ? You come ! Thank God ! this invoice will 
proclaim you solvent. 



NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. 



" And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired 
servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I 
perish with hunger ! I will arise and go to my father, and will 
say unto him Father, I have sinned against heaven and before 
thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me 
as one of thy hired servants." Luke 15 : 17, 19. 

jfEpAME, wealth, love, marriage, friendship, location, 
^& are all more or less prolific mothers of disap- 
pointment. Young and old, rich and poor, the vir- 
tuous and vicious have alike been wrapped in its circ- 
ling folds of darkness. We have often been made to 
exclaim with England's great poet, " Things sweet to 
taste, prove indigestion sour." Others say of us, " Not 
what I expected ! " so, again, we say of them. The 
epicure says this of his food ; the pleasure seeker of 
the phantom that lures him ; the ambitious of the 
baubles they grasp ! 

" Not every flower that blossoms 
Diffuses sweets around; 
Not every scene hope gilds with light, 
Will fair be found." 

Several things were " not what the young prodigal 
expected." I fancy, in the light of his history, we may 
see somewhat of our own. 



NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. 59 

I. The son was not what the father expected. 
His youngest son. First birth, gives joy and pride, 

the last devotion and love. Abraham loved Ishmael, 
but Isaac more ; Jacob loved Reuben, but Joseph 
more, and Benjamin most. The comfort and happi- 
ness of this young man had been studied. All that 
affection could do had been done, to make him love 
duty and home. And now to see him restless and 
uneasy, discontented and fretful, to feel he had neither 
love for father nor home, was indeed enough to break 
the paternal heart. When the father looked for joy, 
found only sorrow, when for the living manifestation 
of filial love, found only its decaying carcass, in leaves, 
dry, withered and dead. Young men ! have any of 
you failed to meet the reasonable expectations of your 
parents? Have you, by your misconduct, and want 
of gratitude, compelled them to say of their boy, " he 
is not what I expected? " If so,write to-night, and 
confess all and ask forgiveness. 

II. But this young man proved to himself he was 
not what he expected. 

He had a purpose in going from home. Perhaps 
one word would tell it all, pleasure. He wanted no 
"pent up Utica" to contract his powers. Once away 
from father's counsel, and mother's eye, among those 
fine young men in the city of whom he had heard or 
read, how happy he would be ! Loosed from mother's 
apron string, and away from father's control, what a 
jolly time he would have. To shout, with swinging 



60 NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. 

hat, "I'm my own master ! " But you are not. God 
or Satan is. I slept all day to get into the city ; and 
many times since that I would have slept a week to 
get out of it again. City scars will be visible on 
many a man in eternity. His mistake, and yours, is 
in thinking happiness is in externals. It is within, not 
without ; condition, not circumstances ; not in what I 
have, but in what I am. A right state of mind and 
condition of the heart is the only basis of a true hap- 
piness. He found more pains and aches, misery and 
discontent, away from home than at home ; more real 
slavery in his fancied freedom, with wine and women, 
than in the old home with father and mother. And 
that because he took himself along. 

III. The country to which he went was not 
what he expected. 

Its distance was greater than he supposed. On the 
train of desire, drawn by the locomotive of appetite, 
he was unconscious of the distance he was being car- 
ried. His imagination was excited. Fancy threw her 
golden beams around his pathway, and expectation, 
singing in softest notes, beguiled him, until the shriek 
of whistle, ring of bell, and bustle of passengers told 
of his arrival at the far country. And, O God ! how 
far it was. Men in these cities who have not been in 
communication with home for so long a time) and 
have gotten so far away that familiar scenes and faces 
are almost wiped from the memory), when they think 
of returning to home and virtue are confronted by the 



NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. 61 

demon of despair, rayless and hopeless, which settles 
down in unrelieved night upon their hearts, croaking 
" Nevermore." Say, brother man, when you gave 
yourself up to having a good time, and gave loose 
rein to your appetite, did you dream of getting so far 
away from purity, happiness, home, and God, as you 
are ? Did you think that rum and beastliness would 
ever get so strong a hold on you that you would sacri- 
fice family, wife, children, manhood and heaven for 
it? You never thought that sensual indulgence would 
become so strong as to lead you, like the stalled ox, 
to the slaughter ; that your vows to wife, and child, 
and manhood, and mother, and God, would be as 
powerless to resist its constant demands as the child's 
toy boat the storm-lashed billows of the Atlantic. 
There are men before me, and in our city, so far away 
that they are without either courage or hope to look 
toward home, and in their despair say to me, " Mr. 
Kendig, I can't get back. I've tried often. I'm gone 
too far." Brother, I pity you ; but be of good cheer. 
There is hope and help, and you may be saved for 
yourself and loved ones. 

IV. Its citizens were not what he expected. 

He found the people a hard-fisted, devil-may-care 
sort of folks, eating, drinking and rioting, a striking 
illustration of every man for himself, and the best man 
wins. Young men, there are plenty who will help you 
down ; but, when down, few will help you up. Have 
you not felt of sin's victims and fashion's votaries, as 



62 NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. 

you have commingled with them in their debauching 
and meaningless orgies, that they were not what you 
expected ? Would you once have thought it possible 
that you would ever have visited such places and con- 
sorted with such people as now make your society? 
Its climate and productions were not what he ex- 
pected. 

A young friend of mine in Iowa went to California, 
and after spending some months wrote back to his 
father, "This is the worst lied about State in the 
Union/ ' Could we see the letters this young man 
wrote back to his father, I have no doubt they would 
utter similar language. He expected to find men 
straight and handsome in that far country, but found 
them crooked and dwarfed ; and in morals, intellect 
virtue and truth, found them the veriest pigmies. He 
had heard of its sunshine, but found clouds only ; of 
its respectability, but found only shame and disgrace ; 
of its wealth, but found only universal poverty ; of its 
liberty, but found the most abject slavery. How I 
tremble for the young men and women who leave 
pure country homes for city life and sin ! With 
strange faces and circumstances, they take the wrong 
train and track, and by the lightning express go down 
to early disgrace and premature death. The country 
merchant is robbed in places where he would blush to 
be seen, and virtuous youth is debauched and ruined 
amid cyprian smiles and hellish witcheries, that lure 
but to destroy, in the theatre or rum-shop. 






NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. 63 

V. The conduct of his father was not what he ex- 
pected. 

None knew better than this boy how willful he had 
been, and how needlessly he had wronged his father. 
Despite his father's entreaties, he dashed the chalice 
from his lips, set his teeth in fixedness of purpose, and 
with clenched fist strode angrily away, intent on de- 
parture and liberty. With painful keenness he now 
recalls the day when he said "Good-by." How that 
loving father, in broken sentences, sobbed, " My boy, 
if anything befalls you, come back ; you will find the 
door open, and a welcome." And his own curt reply, 
" You needn't fear, sir, I shan't trouble you. I guess 
I can take care of myself." As his mind fills with 
these painful memories, what must have been his per- 
sonal sense of shame and remorse? His soul and 
tongue tremble with penitential confessions, while 
his heart is breaking with its burden of remembered 
wrong. In utter despair he turns his face homeward. 
There, in the long distance, is the old homestead on 
the hillside, surrounded with its orchard of dates, 
palms and figs ; there the brooklet in whose pure 
waters he so often sported. As he pauses, hot tears 
burn their red lines down his cheeks ; hope dies out 
in his soul ; he groans, " So near home, and yet so far 
away !" He knows his father is loving and kind, but 
he knows, too, how unkind and unloving he has been. 
He sees the father approach. His heart sinks, for 
unbelief says, " He comes to warn you off." He hes- 



64 NOT WHAT I EXPECTED. 

itates to advance, when the old-timed call, " My boy, 
my dear boy ! how glad I am to see you \ for these 
years I have been so anxious that you should see my 
face and be happy and live," that he forgets his fears, 
and rushes into the embrace of those arms, that so 
lovingly infolded him in his childhood's innocency ! 
The sobbing confessions of the degraded boy are 
smothered in the caresses of the loving father, who 
calls for servants to remove the rags, bring out the 
new robes, kill the calf, and make merry, for the lost 
found, for the dead alive again. 

There are thousands all over this broad earth who 
would like to get to childhood's home, and are daily 
praying that some avenue may open by which they 
can. I could empty the diamond fields of Africa, the 
gold mines of Australia, California or the Black Hills, 
if I could but say, " Boys, a benevolent man has de- 
posited money enough to pay the expenses of each 
home. I am his agent to take the names of all who 
want to go, and if you will come, I will give you a 
ticket and passage money." There is just such a 
Friend, who has made a deposit in God's bank, by 
which each one of you may have your passage paid 
to heaven and rest. Of this you will say, as all others 
have said before, " It is not what I expected. It is so 
infinitely and incomparably better, and greater, and 
more glorious." Come, young men, you have had 
the blackness and bitterness, now have the light and 
the sweetness. 



STEADY UNDER FIRE. 



" But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not 
serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast 
set up." Daniel 3 : 18. 

S^MONG the historic plains of the Bible that of 
Dura is prominent. It was a part of the 
ancient and honorable kingdom of Babylon, and is 
supposed to have been bounded on the east and north 
by the river Chebar, and on the west and south by the 
river Euphrates. Perhaps the earth has no brighter 
example of fidelity to principle than transpired on this 
plain. In the contest, men were the actors, fire the 
weapons, God, angels and devils the spectators. Neb- 
uchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, caused to be 
erected an image, and by royal edict summoned the 
entire nation to its dedication. Among the assembled 
thousands were some slaves whom the misfortunes of 
war had made captives. Some of these, through 
fidelity and prudence, had been elevated to offices of 
honor and trust by the King. These, alone, were 
disobedient to the royal edict. It is beautiful to see 
a ship under full sail, but more thrillingly interesting 
to see her with all sails snugly furled, fleeing before 

6* 



66 STEADY UNDER FIRE. 

the storm, like a frightened gull. It is pleasant to see 
a man move along in the even tenor of his ways, with 
no special strain upon his principles ; but how 
immensely it enhances our interest in him to learn 
that he is surrounded with difficulties and dangers in 
the sea of powerful provocations, plied with sudden 
and great temptations, and that he stands as the anvil 
to the stroke, maintaining his integrity, coming out 
of the ordeal with his character and manhood whole. 

While we are all under fire and subject to tempta- 
tion, the difference is, that the true man detects and 
resists the tempter under whatever guise he may 
approach. Some of you know what it is to be pressed 
with appetite, solicited by friends (falsely so called), 
or goaded by the clamors of helPs whelps, to be or 
do what your sense of loyalty to self and God tells 
you is wrong. Some of you have stood firm. I could 
wish all had. I ask you to study the excuses for 
wrong doing that pressed these young men, and I 
think you will rise from the study with a judgment in 
harmony with mine, that in them was displayed a 
nobler principle, and their conduct achieved a greater 
victory than Leonidas at Thermopylae, Aristides at 
Plataea, Bonaparte at Austerlitz, Wellington at Water- 
loo, Washington at Yorktown, or Grant at Vicksburg. 

I. In extenuation for the doing of a conscious 
wrong they could plead an unusual and peculiar 
dema?id. 

It was extraordinary in its character, and might 



STEADY UNDER FIRE. 67 

never be repeated because so exceptional. It was a 
single act of which they could repent. It was not to 
deny their nationality or their God, nor formally to 
adopt or perpetuate idolatrous conduct or worship. 
Indeed, might they not only seem to worship the image 
and with a secret reserve detest and abjure it in their 
hearts? Did not Naaman so, after being healed by 
the God of Israel, when his duties subsequently called 
him with the king into the Temple of Rimmon ? So 
sin pleads in drinks or games or purloinings. It is 
only once ; do it this time and I will not ask it again. 
Yet once is a concession of your manhood, a yielding 
of your principles, the leak that shall possibly sink 
you, the slipping on the mountain side that shall crush 
you. You have lost your self-respect, and kindled a 
fire that may consume your all in its voracious flames. 
"In vain is the snare set in the sight of any bird," 
but man, with all his boasted reason and intellectual 
superiority, throws himself into the arms that deceived 
him, embraces the viper that stung him and purposely 
cherishes the leeches that destroy him. Truly, sins 
willfully committed are not often heartily repented of. 
A single snowflake, who cares for that ? But a whole 
day of snowflakes, obliterating landmarks, drifting 
over doorways, gathering upon the mountain sides to 
descend in crushing avalanches, burying villages and 
hamlets with their living occupants, who does not care 
for that ? One sin may be trifling, but indulged and 
added to, it makes the profligate man, abandoned 



68 STEADY UNDER FIRE. 

woman, and hardened criminal. There is one only 
course both right and safe : stand firm in your purpose 
and practice of resistance. 

II. These young men had for their second excuse 
that the highest authority in the realm commanded 
them. 

Would not this justify obedience ? The King com- 
manded, and if they did it not they would be forced or 
punished. They were under obligations to obey as 
citizens ; and could they hope to resist such authority ? 
It is a recognized principle of jurists that laws con- 
flicting with the conscience of a nation's subjects 
ought not to be passed and are not to be obeyed. 
The most eminent of legislators and judges have 
always recognized the divine as paramount to the 
human. We all remember the odious fugitive slave 
law that made of every citizen a detective and every 
freeman's home a lockup, if perchance a fugitive from 
bondage sought food or shelter at his door. That 
was the straw that broke the camel's back, and in 
God's providence kindled the fires whose hot flames 
melted the chains from four million of our citizens. 
You cannot plead authority or necessity as an apology 
for your weakness and wickedness in yielding to sin 
and her murderous solicitations. The highest au- 
thority commands you to resist and do right. The 
soldier of Pompeii, after the lapse of one thousand 
years, is found at his post that he would not desert 
when certain death awaited him, and from which all 



STEADY UNDER FIRE. 69 

others were fleeing. The English right that met the 
terrific onslaught of the French left at Waterloo piled 
their dead three deep, but stood to duty unflinching 
as the hills. There are civil and religious duties, and 
we must learn to distinguish between them. A young 
man from the country found a situation as salesman 
in a store in the goodly city of Boston. He was asked 
to lie by misrepresenting a piece of goods that was 
being purchased ; but he refused and lost his place. 
To the inquiry of his father of the employer why his 
son was dismissed, the merchant replied : " He is too 
conscientious. He lost us a sale, the other day, of 
one hundred dollars, because he told the truth to the 
customer." With tears running down his cheeks, the 
father said : " My son, this is the proudest day of my 
life. You have been tried and not found wanting. " 
I fancy a little more conscience these days would suf- 
fuse no cheeks with blushes, bring no tears to any 
eyes, nor in the least augment the horde of hungry 
villians who curse society ; too lazy to work, but yet 
not ashamed to steal. 

III. These slaves had been specially favored by 
the king, and were therefore under very special and 
peculiar obligations to him. 

Through his clemency they were placed in positions 
of comfort, and the severity of their captivity much 
ameliorated. Shall they now seem ungrateful and 
insensible to his favors, by openly setting at defiance 
his wishes? Shall they now prove traitors, and by 



70 STEADY UNDER FIRE. 

their conduct stimulate to riot, his otherwise loyal sub- 
jects? Kindness pleads most powerfully, and good 
men are usually most appreciative of favors and most 
quickly perceive the obligations they impose. But a 
good man must not do a wrong even for a benefactor. 
The husband pleads with the wife to abandon the 
church, the parents plead with the children to re- 
nounce Christ and be gay and festive. The friend 
pleads with the friend recently converted, to mingle 
in pleasures of the world and worldlings as aforetime ; 
and how hard it is to withstand such appeals. How 
many yielding to them have sold themselves to misery 
and infamy, and in the end forfeited the very friends 
for whose sake they perpetrated so great a sin. Stop, 
I pray you, and think ; has God no claim upon you ? 
Are you under no obligations to Him? Shall His 
claims be ignored, while every other's demand shall 
be satisfied? Shall sin be paid in full and He get 
nothing? Moses stood firm, and paid God all, though 
under special obligation to the Egyptian court. 

IV. These men were away from home ; indeed, a 
great way off. 

In a strange country, they and their antecedents 
were alike unknown, and if they bowed down, their 
far-away friends would never find it out. Are you safe 
in being, among strangers, where and what you would 
not be among friends ? Are you safe in doing away 
from your friends what you would not do in their 
presence? A man who does in the absence of his 



STEADY UNDER FIRE. 71 

father, mother, sister, wife, or affianced what he would 
not do with them at his side, bemeans and belittles 
himself, and, if unchecked, is doomed to disgrace. 
Many condemn at home what they practice abroad ; 
but all such are hypocrites. Are your principles, like 
the raiment in your wardrobe, to be worn on special 
occasions, and changed at pleasure? The man who 
thus trifles with his convictions and himself, with his 
vows and integrity, will soon become a feather in the 
sea of accidents and the foot-ball of circumstances. 
Circumstances may change, and so may a man's be- 
lief ; but his integrity, never. 

V. These men could plead that obedience to the 
king's edict was general. 

All were yielding, and it was popular ; indeed, fash- 
ionable. When the current was so strong, might they 
not be allowed to go down the stream ? Should they 
hold out, and thus subject themselves to severe cen- 
sure or unfavorable criticism? "Communis error facit 
jus" — What all do must be right. In insignificant and 
unimportant things, decency requires that we should 
be yielding ; but where principle, duty, the honor of 
God, a committed trust, or your own integrity is at 
stake, you should stand like the mountain to the 
storm, and as immovable as God's granite founda- 
tions in the rock-ribbed masonry of earth. No man's 
conduct can* affect my duty. I owe fealty to self, to 
others, and to God, though all others in the universe 
should fail to recognize or discharge those incumbent 



72 STEADY UNDER FIRE. 

on them. Like Milton,s "Abdiel," we should be 
"faithful found alone, among the faithless." If every 
enslaved Israelite in Babylon had bowed compliance 
with the king's decree, it would have been no justifi- 
cation for these young men. Judas betrayed Christ ; 
but will that warrant you in doing it? Noah stood 
one hundred and twenty years alone. So Elijah, 
Jeremiah, Daniel, and others. Let no popular clamor 
influence you contrary to your honest convictions, and 
dare to do right, though you stand alone. 

VI. The men knew that the penalty for non-com- 
pliance was terrible. 

In view of this, might they not yield this once? 
The fiery furnace : think of it ! What a terror to 
weak nerves is the thought of disfavor or persecution. 
Some say, " My trials are too many and too great ; 
and I cannot endure them. If I follow Christ, I shall 
be cast into the fiery furnace, thrown into the den of 
lions, bound in stocks or imprisoned, dismembered by 
the sack, or burned at the stake." No, bless you, 
nothing like it. "But if we don't do as the world 
does, we shall be thought singular and be laughed at 
as being weak-minded." Great God, is this the only 
martyrdom for Thy cause in our day, and yet do men 
and women tremble in view of it ? Let shot and shell 
hiss and scream around you, but stand to your guns, 
for if you be men you can afford to die in the furnace 
and under fire, but do not be untrue to self, to duty 
and to God. Your commander says : "And fear not 



STEADY UNDER FIRE. 73 

them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the 
soul ; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both 
soul and body in hell. , ' On a certain occasion, Con- 
stantius, the father of Constantine, wished to know 
the character of those around him. As a test, he 
commanded that they should sacrifice to his gods. 
Those who did were banished from his court, and 
those who refused were advanced to the offices of 
state. And so it will be with another greater than 
Constantius. If you are faithful to the little, you shall 
receive the much. If you are willing to die for Christ, 
you shall live with Him. If you are willing to share 
His ignominy, you shall His exaltation. If now you 
carry the cross, then you shall wear the crown. In 
the sternness of an inflexible faith, say to every sin, 
"We will not serve thy gods;" and you soon shall 
enter upon purer enjoyments beyond the reach of 
mutability and decay. 



Pulpit Talks to Young Women. 



THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 



"And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven." Luke 7 : 48. 

fHIS narrative is found alone in the Gospel of the 
Physician. This is such a minute account as you 
would naturally expect from a medical man, familiar 
with diseases, their cause and cure. There is some 
resemblance to this narrative in Matt. 26, Mark 14, 
and John 11. Both the hosts were called "Simon ;" 
but the others were " lepers," this one a " Pharisee." 
There the " head " was annointed ; here the " feet." 
The sayings, the time, the place, all differ. This 
scene was most likely in Capernaum, or certainly in 
some one of the Galilean towns, while the other was 
in Bethany. This woman was most likely a Gentile, 
and must not be confounded with Mary Magdala, nor 
Mary the sister of Lazarus. But I proceed to a more 
important because a more practical discussion of this 
subject. We have here 

I. An uninvited and unwelcome guest. 

A woman. Women are not usually unwelcome vis- 
itors at our homes, and on festive occasions ! Indeed, 

*7 



78 THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 

these places and times would seem extremely gloomy 
and dull without their cheerful presence. 

A sinner. This woman was of bad repute in the 
community, and Simon feared his own character might 
be suspected by her presence. Her reputation was 
not, like that of Caesar's wife, " above suspicion." 
She was covered with the soiled garments of her im- 
pure life. Weighed down, to the point of desperation, 
with the memory of her wasted hours and murdered 
opportunies, she flew, like the bird alarmed at the 
presence of the hawk, to a place of safety. 

What emboldened her to go there, where she was 
neither asked nor wanted ? 

1. Her sorrows, v. 37. 

She was weary of life and sick at heart ; she wanted 
to die, but had not the courage to commit suicide, 
and dared not thrust her polluted soul into the face of 
her offended God. Want makes us fearless. Nico- 
demus came to Jesus alone, and at night, when none 
might see him. He sought the Saviour when He, too, 
was in retirement, thus evincing curiosity rather than a 
deep sense of need. This woman, in broad daylight, 
in the face of the people, in defiance of prejudice, 
with the possibility of insult and ejectment, cried for 
help because of her conscious want. The retrospect 
of her life appalled her ! She began, as do you, to 
seek pleasure, and, like you, too, made the mistake of 
thinking it could be found in fashion's whims and fol- 
lies, amid gay and festive companions, in places where 



THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 79 

wit and genius, or buffoonery and vice, sought to 
amuse the giddy and the simple. These but created 
fictitious wants, that vainly strove to 

" Cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
By base imagination of a feast." 

They led her astay, alluring her farther and yet farther 
from the true source of bliss. I have thought she was 
an only child, doted on by her father, and idolized by 
her mother. Reared amid Oriental elegance, and all 
her desires supplied with Oriental munificence, she 
was the envied of the town. Perhaps she was hand- 
some, vain and self-willed. By her own act, she broke 
the hearts of her parents, cut the cords of filial love, 
that, like silken threads, had held her to purity and 
home, and with a single bound sprang into the social 
darkness of human misery and woe ! To an eminent 
minister there came a young woman, who said, " I 
want you to write to my mother, and ask her to for- 
give my sins, and to love me again. Tell her my 
heart is breaking, and I cannot live unless she forgives 
me I" There are broken hearts all about us ; and few 
are the homes in which cannot be found some skele- 
tons. Young women, one match may destroy a city ; 
one full inspiration of the malaria-burdened atmos- 
phere may sow the seeds of speedy death ; and one 
wrong step may plunge you into the abyssmal depths 
of the " blackness of darkness forever " ! I beg you, 
with the love of a brother, a pastor, a father, walk 



80 THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 

softly before God, and in that " narrow way " on 
which pours the sunlight of His approval. 

2. Christs presence brought her there, v. 37. 

So declares the historian. "When she knew that 
Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house," etc. The 
movements of so important and distinguished a per- 
sonage could not be concealed. The country was full 
of His fame. His miracles had become famous, and 
His utterances stamped him as the greatest of Rabbis. 
Hence, Pharisee and Sadducee, ruler and people, were 
alike aroused with desire and stimulated with curi- 
osity. To see and hear Him was the longing of all 
hearts ; and when, as Teacher or Healer, He came 
into their cities, He was at once sourounded by a 
surging throng. They watched for and followed Him, 
wherever He went, until it became necessary for Him 
to command their retirement, or divinely withdraw 
Himself from among them. Jesus is now, as then, 
the world's moral magnet, drawing the sorrowing and 
the sinful to himself for sympathy and healing. When 
with Jesus, you are safe ; and with Him you are happy 
too. I pray you, therefore, seek Him, and evermore 
abide in His presence. 

3. Her faith, v. 5. 

So Luke affirms, on the testimony of the Healer, 
"Thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace." Two 
other women, as bad as she, had been healed. She 
knew them ; had consorted with them in the ways of 
sin. They were cured, washed, and given back to 



THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 81 

society purged from their vileness. They met this 
sinner. They had not seen each other before for 
many a day. They tell who healed them, and how 
He did it, and that He did it for nothing only for the 
asking. " Well," reasons her faith, "if this Jesus they 
talk about could heal and cleanse my old chum of 
Samaria, and if he cast the devils out of poor Magda- 
lene, I am sure he can help me ; for I don't believe 
my case is more hopeless than was theirs." Then, 
too, she may have been instructed as to the coming of 
the Great Prophet among the Jews, who should save 
and care for Gentile as well as Israelite. She may 
have been taught the truth, which, like buried seed, 
had until now lain dormant and powerless. 

Parents, teach your children the truth of the Word. 
It shall be the sheet-anchor that shall hold them in 
the tempest of unbelief, and the light by which to 
retrace their steps to forgiveness and God. 

Another thought of importance is 

II. Her conduct while in that house and in the 
presence of those important personages. 

1. She wept. v. 38. 

Tears, among the Orientals, imply not grief so much 
as earnest supplication. There is a universal language. 
This language is spoken by all nations, and is under- 
stood alike by all. " Tears," says Albert Smith, " are 
the safety-valves of the heart, when too much pressure 
is laid on ;" and Richter declares that "Tears are the 
dew-drops in which the Sun of Righteousness is mir- 



82 THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 

rored." Tears are not the marks of weakness, but the 
evidences of power; and, since " Jesus wept," tears 
must be forever humanly sacred. This woman was 
not in tears for her dead loved ones, or friends endan- 
gered by accident or disease, but for herself. Scenes 
from her past life came trooping up before her to con- 
demn her. Overwhelmed and abashed by the recol- 
lection of their greatness and number, she feared to 
look Him in the face, and so stood behind Him, and 
poured out " the blood of her heart," as St. Augustine 
calls her tears. The eye is the index of the soul, and 
is the translator of the heart. What more could her 
breaking heart give? Herself, her vileness, and her 
tears, were all she had to give. 

Young women, are there no plague-spots on your 
souls? no blotched pictures of your life's painting? no 
remembered sins that leave their sting behind? Are 
there no lacerated hearts, no broken vows, no unful- 
filled hopes, to cause you grief to-night? Come, with 
your remembered 'sins, and weeping, kneel, and to the 
ear Divine confess the wrongs that oppress your souls ! 

2. Kissed His feet. 

Kissing is a common Eastern salutation. It might 
seem strange to us to see men kissing each other, as 
do the women ; and yet in the East it is a very com- 
mon custom. Jacob kissed his father, and Joseph his 
brother, and Aaron Moses ; while the elders at Miletus 
fell on Paul's neck, and weeping, kissed him. Among 
idolatrous nations, kissing was an act of worship. It 



THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 83 

is regarded as an act of loyalty. Wetstein says kissing 
the hand was a sign of adoration ; kissing princes was 
a token of homage ; kissing the dust expressed bitter 
and deep humiliation. To kiss the feet of the Rabbis 
was regarded as a special favor. Kissing the Pope's 
foot began with Adrian I. or Leo III., about the close 
of the Eighth Century. Among all nations, the kiss 
is the symbol of peace. With this woman, it may 
have indicated humility, adoration, loyalty and love. 
She kissed not coldly and formally, with ceremonial 
dignity and customary civility, but warmly, passion- 
ately, earnestly ; as a mother might be expected to 
kiss her child that had suddenly been snatched from 
danger, or a devoted wife the cold lips of a loving 
husband who had been in a moment stricken from her 
embrace by death ! Not once, or twice, but again 
and again, with affectionate vehemence, does she 
press her hot lips to those feet, while on them, thick 
and fast, fall the tears that scald her cheeks as they 
leave their burning imprint on her face in blistered 
lines. Absorbed with her own great grief, and in faith 
and hope waiting for His forgiving word, she takes no 
note of those around her, and for very pity the Master 
does not interfere with the blessed grief of this true 
penitent. 

When you recollect how you have treated His invita- 
tions, resisted His tender calls, and rejected His love ; 
how you have " known the right, and yet the wrong 
pursued," to His constant pain ; how you have given 



84 THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 

yourselves up to vanity, worldliness, selfish pursuits, or 
voluptuous enjoyments, — have you no tears to shed 
at His feet? no kiss of adoration at His long forbear- 
ance? of humility for offending such dignity? of 
loyalty to such a claimant, and affection for such a 
Saviour? Let me entreat you, " Kiss the Son, lest He 
be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath 
is kindled but a little. " 

3 . Wiped His feet with her hair. 

Paul affirms, the hair is "The glory of the woman." 
Among the Orientals, hair flowing loosely was a sign 
of mourning. To cut a lock at death implied submis- 
sion. To cut a lock of hair and give to the buyer, 
was a sign among the Jews of a slave becoming the 
property of the purchaser. The hair has been, and 
still is, the pride of womanhood, and in all ages of the 
world has great attention been paid to caring for it. 
St. Augustine declares "The 4iairs of her head were the 
devil's net, wherewith he ensnares souls." Thus she 
brings her most valued and highly prized adornment 
into the service of Christ, saying in act, as another 
said in words, " Let Thy handmaid be as a servant to 
wash Thy feet." In these three significant acts, I read 
the lesson of her true reformation, her profound loy- 
alty, and her active service ! 

III. The triple effect of her triple act. 

Conduct like hers, in such a presence, and on such 
an occasion, and with such a personage, would nat- 
urally leave a strong and striking impression on all 



THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 85 

beholders. It would be a most valuable study to 
acquaint ourselves with the effect of the same act 
upon different persons at the same time. The histo- 
rian has traced this result, in this instance, in strong 
colors and sharp contrasts. 

1. What the effect on Simon ? 

One word might express it all : astonishment. His 
Phariseeism is wounded at her audacity, and insulted 
by her presumption. More still, it created in his mind 
a distrust as to the character of his guest (v. 39), who, 
by allowing this woman to touch Him, contracted cer- 
emonial uncleanness. If He were a prophet, as He 
pretends to be, would He not know she was a sinner, 
a woman of the town ? and would not He denounce 
her impudence ? 

Simon is the type of too many church members, 
who, paying a punctilious regard to the letter of the 
law, do yet grossly violate its spirit. Defilement 
comes not from without, but from within ; not in the 
touch, but in the emotion that moves to the touch. 
Still, men and women sit on their velvet cushions, 
listening to operatic music from Christless sinners' 
lips, or powerless sermons from forceless ministers, 
wondering why this sin-befouled Magdalene should 
come into their church to see Jesus ! O woman ! de- 
graded in your own eyes, and in the eyes of others you 
may be ; but if you would reform, and repent, and be 
saved, come now and here, for it is the spirit of this 
pulpit, and the prayer and effort of this congregation, 



86 THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 

to seek the lost and neglected, and bring them to 
purity, peace and Heaven ! We are astonished, not 
that you are here, but that, being here, you do not at 
once seek Jesus the Saviour ! 

2. What was the effect on Christ? 

Here, again, methinks one word would utter it all : 
admiration (vs. 47 — 50). Profoundly pleased was He 
at her penitence, faith, courage, humility, perseverance 
and love ! Simon was not polite, neglected the com- 
monest courtesies of hospitality, — the water and the 
kiss. This woman furnishes water for His feet from 
her tears of anguish ; a towel for the wiping from her 
unbraided tresses ; and for His feet kisses from her 
loving lips ! She was polite, devout, reverent. He 
who reads the heart saw deep sincerity, profound self- 
abasement, utter wretchedness, and aspirations for a 
nobler life, in this woman's heart ; and hence He 
extols her virtues, and declares appreciation of her 
conduct and approval of her desires. 

The giddy and the thoughtless may, and most likely 
will, mock at your determination to change from a 
wrong to a right life. They will ridicule your coming 
where Jesus is; but He approves your coming, ad- 
mires your purpose and effort, and, waiting your tears 
and kisses, stands ready to coronate you with His 
smile, bless you with His love, and assure you of His 
forgiveness, because of your earnest and persistent 
faith ! Let others mock ; but you make sure of Christ 
and pardon. 



THE WOMAN ADMIRED. 87 

3. What was the effect on this woman - sinner ? 
v. 48. 

What a contrast ! As she turns to retire, how un- 
like her former self ! No longer hangs down the head 
with shame ! no longer run down those tears of burn- 
ing from her eyes ! no longer struggles there in the 
mind hope and fear, faith and unbelief ! No, no ! 
He spake, " Thy sins are forgiven," and the chains fell 
off, the doors swung open, health returned, joy was 
imparted, peace was given, pardon was pronounced, 
and forgiveness assured ! Condemned then, justified 
now ! A sinner then, a saint now ! Believing then, 
knowing now ! Hoping then, enjoying now ! Sinking 
then, risen now ! Lost then, but saved now 1 The 
angels sing for joy at her recovery, and her own heart 
swells to breaking, while her lips declare His love and 
praise in song, in testimony, and in act ! Hallelujah ! 
what a Saviour ! 



THE WOMAN WOOED. 



"And when she had so said, she went her way, and called 
Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and call- 
eth for thee." John 11 : 28. 



^[ICKNESS and death are seasons of trouble and 
«^ sorrow that come alike to all. No condition or 
circumstance in life will shield us from them. The 
inmates of this Bethany home were two sisters and an 
only brother. Some suppose Martha was a widow, 
while Mary and Lazarus were unmarried. Lazarus 
was the only male provider and protector of these 
sisters. In this home, the Son of Man, wearied with 
His constant labors, found a hearty welcome, and here 
He often rested. In this trio of persons there was 
much that Jesus loved, and the attachment between 
them was deeply seated and profoundly genuine. He 
was not ignorant of their great sorrow, though many 
miles away, for He said to His disciples, " Our friend 
Lazarus sleepeth ; but I go, that I may awake him out 
of sleep." "Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Laz- 
arus is dead." He comes to them, a light in their 
darkness, a comfort in their sorrow, an instructor in 
their ignorance, a deliverer in their trouble, and a 



THE WOMAN WOOED. 89 - 

restorer of their loss. Poor impetuous Martha meets 
Him with a chiding and covert rebuke ; " If Thou 
hadst been here," as though Jesus might have been 
and ought to have been there. It might be more 
charitable to assume that it was an expression of her 
faith in His power. He tells her of the resurrection, 
and puts her faith to the test. She believes in the 
future ultimate and general resurrection, but cannot 
think it possible that the brother who is now dead, 
and has been for four days, can be raised before that 
final day. Mary, sad and pensive, overwhelmed with 
her great loss, still sits in the house, conversing with 
or receiving the consolations of sympathizing friends 
and neighbors. The Master bids Martha go and call 
her sister. Martha, entering the house, addressed 
Mary, " The Master is come, and calleth for thee." 

To some thoughts based on this call, I now invite 
the attention of these young women, for whose special 
interest these sermons are prepared and delivered. 

I. The Master is come. 

1. If the Master is come, then is His incarnation 
confirmed. 

Angels sang His birth-anthem over His infant head, 
and rendered luminous the manger-cradle by their 
reflected glory. The new-made star, with concen- 
trated beams of supernal brightness, pointed to the 
place where lay the obscured Son of Righteousness. 
The shepherds left their flocks to worship this divine 
incarnation. The Magi ceased their speculations, and 

8* 



90 THE WOMAN WOOED. 

came to pour their richest treasure of gold, frankin- 
cense and myrrh in grateful tribute at His feet. At 
His baptism the Paraclete descends and lights upon 
Him, while a voice from the excellent glory declares, 
" This is my beloved Son," and proclaims the com- 
mand, " Hear ye Him !" 

2. If He has come, then ate the ordinances of value. 

Has He not said, " Where two or three are gathered 
together in my name, there am I in the midst of 
them"? This was true then, and is blessedly true 
now. Together to worship Him, in obedience to His 
commandments, with a dependence upon His spirit, 
and a single eye to His glory, in the faithful use of 
the means of grace, you shall find the Master. Walls 
shall not exclude Him, obscurity shall be no barrier to 
His presence. Poverty and ignorance will not keep 
Him away, if you meet to worship God! With the 
ordinance of baptism He is present in His approval, 
and in the witness of the Spirit whose work the rite 
symbolizes ; in the solemn eucharistic feast that per- 
petually tells the story of His great sacrifice ; in His 
low-stooping to unparalleled sufferings ; in the con- 
stantly reiterated command, "This do in remembrance 
of me;" with the blessed affirmation, "This is my 
body which is broken for you, " — in all these He is 
present. In His house, under the ministry of the 
Word ; in the social meeting for prayer and praise ; 
in the closet of home, in holy and fervent supplica- 
tion ; at the family altar, around which gather loving 



THE WOMAN WOOED. 91 

hearts to offer grateful tribute to His name ; in 
" searching the Scriptures,'' where is told the story 
of His love and portrayed the glory of His character 
and the blessedness of His service, — in all of these 
is He present with the devout heart to illuminate, to 
sanctify, and to bless ! 

3. If He has come, then is He present in the affairs 
of life. 

Life is not the huddled work of chance, or the pro- 
duct of a blind fatuity. There is much truth in the 
utterance of the poet Thompson : 

" There is a power 
Unseen, that rules the illimitable world, 
That guides its motions from the brightest star 
To the least dust of this sin-tainted world; 
While man, who madly deems himself the lord 
Of all, is naught but weakness and dependence. 
This sacred truth, by sure experience taught, 
Thou must have learnt, when wandering all alone; 
Each bird, each linnet, flitting through the sky, 
Was more sufficient for itself than thou." 

In the secret councils where we form worldly plans, 
in the wild delirium of joy with which we essay to 
execute them, and amid the crashing of our hopes, 
the failure of our schemes, and the wrecking of our 
prospects, is present this ever truest of Friends, this 
most loving of Masters. In sickness He is present to 
make your bed, to lay beneath you His arm, to pillow 
your aching head on the soft promises of His word, 



92 THE WOMAN WOOED. 

and fill your room with the odor of His fragrant holi- 
ness and love. In dying, His staff is your support, 
and He cheers you with the assurance communicated 
to your soul, " I am with thee to the end." 

The wife of my dear friend, the Rev. Mr. C, was 
dying. When, by the advice of the medical attend- 
ant, he went to convey the intelligence to her of her 
probable near release, he said, " Do you know you are 
very sick?" " Yes." "The doctor thinks you may 
possibly not live till morning : have you any prepara- 
tion to make?" " No : all has been done for over 
eighteen years." This because the Master had come, 
and she received Him. 

4. The Master will come once again. 

No fact stands more fully assured in the Scriptures 
than that the Christ, who came, suffered, and died 
upon the cross, was raised from the dead, ascended 
into heaven, and gave gifts unto men, " shall so come 
in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." 
The trembling earth, the rending graves, the fading 
stars, the expiring sun, the opening heavens, the con- 
voying angels, are expressions used to indicate the 
commotion of that magnificent day of Christ's tri- 
umph and coronation. There will be but two parties 
interested in that visit of the Master — saints and sin- 
ners ! Young women, on which side of the line are 
you? Hear what Paul says, Heb. 9 : 28 : "So Christ 
was once offered to bear the sins of Mary ; and unto 
them that look for Him shall He appear the second 



THE WOMAN WOOED. 93 

time without sin, unto salvation." Do you look for 
His coming with a conscious preparedness through 
His death and mediation ? or are you still among that 
unhappy number of whom the recluse of Patmos 
speaks, Rev. 1:7: " Behold, He cometh with clouds, 
and every eye shall see Him, and they also which 
pierced Him, and all kindred of the earth shall wail 
because of Him" ? By your persistent wickedness, 
your suicidal rejection of Christ, are you piercing 
Him ; and, dying thus, your eternity will be one of 
unrelieved and unrelievable wailing, for " there re- 
maineth no more sacrifice for sin." Right here I 
leave with the acceptors and rejectors of the Master 
the utterance of Paul the aged, 2 Thess. 1 : 7, 8, 9 : 
" And to you who are troubled, rest with us, when the 
Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His 
mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on 
them that know not God, and obey not the gospel of 
our Lord Jesus Christ : who shall be punished with 
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, 
and from the glory of His power." 

Young women, by all your hopes of heaven, your 
fears of hell, and the one hour that Infinite Love 
grants you now and here, break from sin, and be 
saved by this Christ ! 

The Master is an interested spectator ; hence 

I. He calleth. 

That is why He was here instead of in heaven. The 
very end of His coming was to "call sinners to repent- 



94 THE WOMAN WOOED. 

ance." From infancy has He been calling you in 
some one of the many ways He seeks to gain your ear 
and win your heart. 

1. He calls by His spirit. 

An internal inspiration toward the good and the 
right. This whispered call is heard in the first hours 
of moral consciousness. It convinced you of need, 
creating and exciting in you a desire for God ; con- 
vinced of sin, and moved you to long for and pray to 
God. In these maturer years you have felt the powei 
and heard the voice of this " Reprover of Sin." He 
has been with you in the home, shop, street, church ; 
in the light of day and the darkness of night ; in sea- 
sons of mirth and times of revelry ; in the afflictive 
providences of life, has He sought to arouse your 
conscience, impress your mind, and win your heart. 
Again and again have you heard this Divine Voice 
calling you, until you feared to sleep, and life became 
alarmingly burdensome. Constantly, tenderly, and 
definitely, as Martha to Mary, has that spirit-voice 
been sent of the Master to tell you He had come and 
called for you. Have you not heard Him ? Do you 
not hear Him now? Yield to him now, I beseech 
you ! 

2. Through His people does He call you. 

In every age God has had His human representa- 
tives, by and through whom He spoke to the wicked. 
Not all are called to do the specified work of a minis- 
ter, and yet all are witnesses of, for, and to, the same 



THE WOMAN WOOED. 95 

God, truth and people. In proof of this, look at some 
facts. Noah was God's representative to the antedilu- 
vians ; Abraham and Lot were the warners of Sodom 
and Gomorrah, those wicked cities of the plain; 
Moses and Aaron were the witnesses before Pharaoh ; 
Elijah pronounced the Divine doom at the Court of 
Ahab ; Jeremiah warned the impenitent Jehoakim ; 
Daniel sounded the - tocsin to a guilty and beastly 
Belshazzar ; and Jesus himself to a rebellious Jeru- 
salem. 

By the piety of your parents, the conversion of your 
friends, the prayers and tears of His people, and the 
entreaties of His ministry, is Christ calling you. In 
the conscious necessities of your own souls, your own 
cravings after rest, the graves of your buried loves, 
and the starless outlook of the future, is voiced His 
call for you to come, and find rest and peace. 

III. This call is personal and particular. 

The personal pronoun "thee," and the proper name 
" Mary," stamp it with an irresistible personality. 

1. Thee, Mary. 

You, child of frivolity, who sit here to-night, care- 
ful of your external adorning, but careless of your 
internal condition ; you, child of thoughtless gayety, 
who, like the butterfly, only lives to flit with gorgeous 
colors in the sunlight of a day ; you, child of serious- 
ness, who, bereft of earthly loves and earthly home, 
art pining for some breast to lean upon, and some ear 
into which can be poured the sorrows of your full 



96 THE WOMAN WOOED. 

heart, — this Jesus is a suitor for your hand and heart. 
In Him there is a love that is sweeter than life and 
stronger than death ; an antidote for all your sins ; a 
mollient for all your wounds. You, child of baptismal 
covenant and consecration, your obedient parents 
gave you to God, by that most sacred of rites, and in 
that divinest of covenants, baptism. They wept over 
and prayed for you ; recognizing God's claims, they 
gave you back to Him, feeling you were but loaned to 
them until the Master should call for you. Down to 
this hour, you have repaid their love and tenderness 
and tears with disobedience, unkindness, and an utter 
disregard for their holiest wishes respecting your true 
life. Young woman, Jesus the Saviour, Christ the 
Anointed, the only begotten Son of God, sues for your 
heart ! Shall He have it ? 

A child was sleeping in its crib, by the side of the 
bed, in which slept the parents. A terrible thunder- 
storm was crashing through the heavens ; peals of 
thunder, appalling in their loudness and prolonged 
reverberations, were succeeded by firery flashes of 
painful brilliancy. The dear child awoke with a 
sharp scream, " Papa, its dark ! Its dark papa ! Take 
Nellie's hand ! " He put out his hand, and firmly 
held the hand of his darling, who instantly dropped 
into a quiet sleep, to awake in the morning and find 
the darkness and tempest gone, leaving only sunshine 
and a richer verdure behind them. Dear young girl, 
it is dark in your soul, and mayhap in your life, and 



THE WOMAN WOOED. 97 

home. The tempest of sin is upon you ! Cry, oh, cry, 
"Father, take my hand" ! See, He stretches out His 
hand in Jesus. Take it quickly ; then will you rest, 
finding your night turned to day, and the threatening 
tempest to a celestial benediction. 

2. Because personal, this call is important. 

The Lord Jesus was always serious, and never trifled 
with a human soul. This call of His is not to the 
pillory or the fagot ; not to disgrace and poverty \ not 
misery or death ; not to late hours, unhealthy 
homes, wicked associates or disreputable places. No, 
no ! He calls to the purest of joys, the noblest com- 
panionships, the most exalted experiences, and the 
divinest employments. He sees you blind, and in the 
road of danger and death, and He offers to lead you in 
the path of life. He sees you incurably sick, abandoned 
by the doctors of reason, science, philosophy and 
morality, with your substance exhausted, and deserted 
by friends ; He comes to heal you, "without money 
and without price." He sees you an outcast, without 
a home, no one to care for your soul, wandering up 
and down amid life's highways and byways, unknown 
and uncared for, with none to feed, clothe or shelter 
you ; He comes to clothe you with salvation, give you 
angels' food to eat, and a home among the blood- 
washed, in the "House not made with hands, eternal 
in the heavens." He sees you poor, but he comes, 
that, emptying himself and becoming poor, He might 



98 THE WOMAN WOOED. 

enrich you ! Adorable Master, to this richness and 
glory Thou callest these ! 

3. This call because personal is condescending. 

How passing strange, that He whose glories the 
angels sang before the worlds were framed ; that He, 
to whose praise all nature testified, and before whom 
seraphim bowed in reverence, and of whom prophets 
spake and sang with gladsome awe ; in whose honor 
all creation ministered with its perpetual ministrelsy, 
should turn away from the laudations of the universe, 
to win the love of the only being in that universe who 
did not sing His praise ! Wonder, O woman ! Leav- 
ing the glory He had with the Father before the 
worlds were, He stoops to sue you for your hand ! He 
begs for your heart ! Your love will gladden His 
heart ; your love will enrich His joy ! Think of this 
Suitor. Never such another ! In the whole realm of 
wedded love, none so royal 'or glorious as this ! Re- 
ject Him, and your loss is irreparable and eternal ! 
Accept Him, and your blessedness is assured, now 
and then, here and hereafter. Will you treat Him as 
did Mary ? When called, she came ; when addressed, 
she listened ; when sought, she was influenced by the 
dignity of the Suitor, the immensity of His wealth, 
and the incomparable superiority of His character. 
When proposed to, she accepted. Will you act thus 
promptly and wisely ? 

During the meetings of Moody and Sankey in Phil- 
adelphia, the following circumstance occurred, and is 



THE WOMAN WOOED. 99 

vouched for by Mr. Sankey : One evening a well- 
dressed lady went into the inquiry- room, during the 
special services there, and asked a Christian woman 
present to pray for her. Her story was soon ascer- 
tained. About a year ago she wandered from a dear 
Christian mother and everything that was good and 
pure. She was present at one of Mr. Moody's meet- 
ings, and was struck with his words " that none were 
so far gone but what the Lord will restore them. ,, A 
Philadelphia minister subsequently took her to his 
home, and after three days she found peace in believ- 
ing. She is now again living with her mother, and is 
one of the happiest persons in that city. 

Young women, you have wandered from the home 
of a loving Father in Heaven ! He waits your return. 
Will you not to-night say, " Pray for me"? Will you 
not now accept this Son of His love ? 

" Far sadder sights the eye can know 
Than proud bark lost, or seamen's woe, 
Or battle-fire, or tempest-cloud, 
Or prey-birds' shriek on ocean's shroud — 
The shipwreck of the soul ! " 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 



" And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt thou go 
with this man? And she said, I will go." Gen. 24: 58. 

<Q?HIS is one among the many deeply interesting 
^ historic stories of this wonderful old Book, and 
brings us face to face with one of the most momentous 
acts in the history of a human life ; when for weal or 
woe a woman engages herself to one as apart from all 
others. This is an act that is so fraught with happi- 
ness or misery to the contracting parties that it should 
have our sincerest prayers for Divine enlightenment, 
our most deliberate judgment, and the aid of our most 
judicious friends as counsellors. A misstep at this 
point cripples if it does not destroy us, for time, if not 
for eternity. Said William Penn, " Never marry but 
for love ; but see thou lovest what is lovely." And 
Holmes declares, " It is the most momentous question 
a woman is ever called upon to decide, whether the 
faults of the man she loves are beyond remedy, and 
will drag her down, or whether she is competent to be 
his earthly redeemer, and lift him to her own level." 

Here are two distinguished parties, both the off- 
spring of royalty: Isaac {meaning laughter or joy), 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 101 

the son of Abraham the Prince, and Rebekah {mean- 
ing a cord with a noose), the daughter of the Prince 
Bethuel, who was also father to Laban and Nahor. 
Sarah, the wife of Abraham, and mother of Isaac, was 
dead ; and, with the conviction that his own end drew 
near, Abraham was anxious to secure a suitable part- 
ner for his son. This he could not find among his 
godless neighbors ; hence the journey and its sequel. 
Let me ask your attention 

I. To the desire of good parents for their children. 

Isaac was a good and obedient son. He loved his 
parents with a sincere and fervent love. Hence, 
Abraham was anxious to secure a pious wife for his 
son, that his character might not be endangered and 
his faith and soul destroyed. Among the Hebrews, 
the father selected the wife for the son, and husband 
for the daughter. If a son had any preference for a 
particular person for his wife, he would ask his father 
to procure her for him. A father could not give his 
daughters in marriage without the consent of the sons 
and brothers, if there were any. Grant, in his history 
of the Nestorians, says, " This rule is observed among 
them at the present day. No man thinks of making a 
marriage contract for himself. In case the father is 
dead, the eldest brother takes the father's place. 
Where the intended bride lives at a distance, the 
matter is sometimes intrusted to a faithful servant or 
agent, as was done by Abraham in relation to his son 
Isaac." 



102 THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 

Solomon says, " Whoso findeth a wife findeth a 
good thing, and obtaineth favor of the Lord." Prov. 
18 : 22. By this, I suppose we are to understand a 
good wife ; a true woman with those wifely qualities 
that will make her a fit and safe companion for a 
pious and holy man. Solomon was more wise in pre- 
cept than fortunate in practice ; for by the wickedness 
of his own wife was his heart drawn from God. Abra- 
ham wanted the daughter of a good mother as the 
wife for his son. He wanted his son's zeal for God 
encouraged, not chilled ; his faith in the promises 
intensified, not obscured ; Isaac helped, not hindered, 
in his heavenward journey ; hence he sought prayer- 
fully and sincerely for a pious young woman. To 
secure this, he must turn away from the wealthy, the 
giddy, and the worldly, by whom he was surrounded, 
and must turn to the Church of God, to find among 
her children, those worshiping at her altars and ador- 
ing the same God, the qualities essential to marital 
love with this son of promise and heir of the cove- 
nant. He knew a bad wife would render his existence 
miserable, if she did not destroy his faith. It was 
Jezebel who led Ahab to idolatry and death. It was 
Herod's wife who nerved his cowardly hand to murder 
God's ambassador. It was the licentious wife, Dru- 
silla, who pushed a Felix to his base treachery. So 
we find a pious Hannah encourages a timid Elkanah. 
So the wife of Manoah brought joyful news from the 
messenger of God ; and it was the wise and prudent 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 103 

Abigail who saved her stingy and churlish husband, 
Nabal, from David's avenging sword. It was because 
of the earnest intercessions of a pious wife that the 
loving Shunammite husband and father had an only 
son restored unto him. 

In choosing a companion, select qualities rather 
than the accident of circumstances. Apparel changes 
in texture and form \ mere bodily charms will waste 
away under the influence of disease, or the abrasions of 
time ; but qualities, like pure gold, always have an in- 
trinsic value, and like diamonds of the first water, 
never lose their lustre. 

II. The messenger dispatched. 

With what solemnity and interest did this father 
and son talk over this matter, of so great moment to 
both, involving, as it did, so much of joy or sorrow ! 
He believed that in the Mesopotamia branch of the 
family, among his own relatives, God would provide a 
wife for his son. So walking by the best light he had, 
he called his oldest and most trusted servant, Eliezer, 
and informs him of his wish and purpose. He admin- 
isters to him an oath, that he will well and truly per- 
form this delicate and responsible mission. This 
servant is a religious man, as all his conduct in this 
history abundantly proves. He asks Abraham, "Shall 
I be responsible if the woman will not come?" "No," 
answered Abraham. " If you go to Haran, and lay 
the matter before Bethuel, and his daughter will not 
come, then are you free from your oath!" Many 



104 THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 

years had passed since there had been any direct 
communication between these brothers. They were 
young men when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees, 
and turned his face toward that unknown land that 
the Almighty promised him ; now, they are both in 
the sear of life, shrouded in the thickening mists that 
never again shall lift in this world. Abraham would 
therefore impress Bethuel with his dignity and pros- 
perity ; therefore was this outfit one of care and value. 
Ten camels constituted the train. There are two 
species of the camel : viz., the Bactrian and the Ara- 
bian. These sustain about the same relation to each 
other as does the race-horse to the draught-horse. 
The former is fleet of foot, and will, under favorable 
conditions, make a hundred miles a day ; while the 
latter will carry from five to nine hundred pounds, 
and journey twenty-four miles a day. The distance 
from Hebron, Abraham's home, to Nahor, BethueFs 
home, could not be less than three hundred and fifty 
miles ; and this would require at least fourteen days 
time for these Asiatic freighters. This road lay through 
a wilderness inhabited by warlike tribes. It required 
no small amount of courage and judgment to safely 
bring such a caravan to its destination, surrounded by 
difficulties so numerous, and perils so imminent. 

If you will refer to this twenty-fourth chapter of 
Genesis, and read, you will learn of the oath in verses 
2 — 4 ; the object m verse 4 ; the outfit in verse 10 ; and 
the spirit and temper of the messenger in verse 12. 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 105 

By the careful study of these, you will find much that 
you may make of practical value to yourselves. As 
Abraham sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac, so 
are we sent to find a bride for Christ ! God is inter- 
ested in His only Son, and He would have His name 
and fame exalted ; would have all hearts won to and 
for Him. This is the aim of every minister whom 
God calls and sends. For this they traverse land and 
sea, penetrating the jungles of Africa, defying the ma- 
laria of India, risking life amid the tribes of Tartary, 
consenting to die among the Hottentots of the South, 
the Esquimaux of the North, the Celestials of the 
East, or the Indians of the West. "They count not 
their life dear unto themselves, that they may finish 
their course with joy, and the ministry they have 
received of the Lord Jesus." As this servant was 
released from the responsibility of the failure, if he 
did his errand faithfully, so are we released from the 
responsibility of your loss, if you reject our faithfully 
delivered message. Yet I cannot but think how sad 
Eliezer would have felt to turn back, having failed in 
his mission. And can you fancy how sad and sorrow- 
ful we feel, as God's messengers, when we are com- 
pelled, because of your refusal, to report to our Lord, 
" We have failed ! We went to them, spoke the whole 
truth, and plead with them; but they would not"? 
Young women, save me from this sorrow, and your- 
selves from a terrible doom ! 



106 THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 

III. The things to which the servant testified. 

There is something to me very natural, simple, and 
beautiful in this address of Abraham's servant. That 
you may catch at once its naturalness and its religious- 
ness, let me briefly notice it. 

1. He confessed his Master's name. v. 34. 

" I am Abraham's servant." This would at once 
insure him a hearing. How interested instantly that 
entire household to hear from the brother and uncle 
of whom they had so long been without information ! 
How eagerly the younger members of the family would 
strain their ears to catch every word ! How seriously 
and tenderly would Bethuel and his wife speak of 
Abraham, as they last saw him, and reckon up the 
thirty or fifty years since he had left them ! How 
they would weep at the story of Sarah's death, and the 
consequent loneliness of Abraham ! Carefully and 
truthfully speaks this servant, taking his true place in 
all humility, exalting and extolling his master, satisfied 
to shine in this borrowed glory, content with a humble 
relationship to such regal dignity. 

2. He told of the wealth of his master, v. 35. 
"The Lord hath blessed my master greatly;" "He 

hath given him flocks, and herds, and silver, and gold, 
and men-servants, and maid-servants, and camels, and 
asses." 

These mentioned elements of wealth would be 
readily understood by these people, who themselves 
were possessors of flocks and herds and servants. 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 107 

They would at once understand how rich and pow- 
erful Abraham had become ; but here was no exagger- 
ation, no empty braggadocio, no puffed-up or vain, 
worldly glory, no lauding of Abraham at the expense 
of truth. It was not Abraham's diligence, or frugality, 
or skill, that acquired this property, and secured this 
social eminence, but the Lord's blessing on his en- 
deavor ! How he keeps Abraham constantly asso- 
ciated with the Lord in all his history ! but, lest his 
story might be questioned, he 

3. Displays the evidences of that wealth. 

" And the servant brought forth jewels of silver, 
and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them to 
Rebekah. He gave also to her brother and to her 
mother precious things (v. 53)." These would at 
once confirm his story, and be conclusive evidence of 
the wealth of Abraham. 

It is worthy of thought to see how carefully and 
directly this servant prepares the minds of these peo- 
ple for the final proposition he has come four hundred 
miles to submit. He never forgets his master nor his 
master's son, in whose honor and for whose happiness 
he is on this embassy. By a series of arguments and 
demonstrations he leads their minds to Abraham, as 
their relative, thence to the honor and distinction he 
had acquired among the strangers in the land where 
he sojourned ; to his great wealth, and abundant* pos- 
sessions of all those things esteemed greatly desirable 
by an Eastern Prince ; and then most adroitly declares, 



108 THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 

4. That all this wealth he had given to his only 
heir, Isaac. 

"And Sarah my master's wife, bare a son to my 
master when she was old ; and unto him hath he given 
all that he hath" (v. 36). And it is for this only 
son, possessed in fee-simple of all this wealth and 
honor, that I come to ask the hand of your daughter 
in marriage. 

Now observe, Eliezer discovers to BethuePs family, 
both Abraham, the father, and Isaac, the son ; 
indeed, the only son of special promise. He 
represents this son as being endowed with all the 
virtues, and possessed of all the riches of the 
father. So we testify of God, and of His " Well 
beloved" and " Only begotten Son," "Whom He 
hath made heir of all things." We declare His name 
and point to His wealth, in "the cattle upon a thousand 
hills," the gold in the mines, the fishes in the sea; 
we show the evidences of this wealth and glory in the 
existence and character of His people, the angels 
who stand in His presence, ready to do His bidding, 
and the ceaseless homage paid Him by all creatures, 
at all times, and in all places. Then, too, we affirm, 
as did Abraham's servant, that all these things hath 
he given to his son. "All things that the Father hath 
are mine." We tell you of the glory of God, and the 
transference of this wealth and glory to His only Son, 
Jesus, that He may win your hand and heart for His 
love and service, I wonder how a woman, with her 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 109 

need of love, with her shrinking, sensitive, yearning 
nature, can look into and study the character of the 
Lord Jesus, and not instantly embrace Him, and with 
all the passion of her soul tell Him, " To Thee I com- 
mit the keeping of my soul and body, for time and 
eternity ; for Thou art true and Thy love ineffable ! " 

IV. Her engagement and its gift. 

" And they called Rebekah, and said unto her, Wilt 
thou go with this man? And she said, I will go " 
(v. 58). " Behold, Rebekah is before thee, take her, 
and go, and let her be thy master's son's wife, as the 
Lord hath spoken" (v. 51). She heard the testimony 
of this stranger, saw some of the tokens of its truth- 
fulness ; she was convinced, believed his story, and, 
because of it, accepted the proposal, and engaged 
herself to a man she had never seen. 

We are constantly doing the business of life on 
slighter evidence than that which influenced the ac- 
tion of Rebekah and her family. Thousands marry 
on as short an acquaintance, with no evidence of the 
will of God in the premises at all ; so that it has 
passed into a proverb : " They marry in haste, and 
repent at their leisure." Here was a careful and cir- 
cumstantial statement of facts on the one side, with a 
candid disposition to carefully ponder and weigh these 
statements on the other. Eliezer did not want her 
consent unless it was freely given ; nor was there any 
need on his part to exaggerate the facts ; indeed, he 
could not well do it if he would. Her engagement, 



110 THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 

therefore, was entirely voluntary. The facts convinced 
her, and what matter whether they did others or not ? 
She must decide for herself; must make her own 
choice and use her own judgment for her own weal or 
woe. She chose Isaac. Think you she ever regretted 
it? that she lived to repent the engagement of that 
day? But for that engagement, she would have re- 
mained in eternal obscurity, like thousands of others. 
This, the one grandest venture and act of her whole 
life, has made her illustrious, and given her an immor- 
tality among the noble and morally heroic of earth's 
daughters ! With this engagement came some gifts 
worthy of our notice. 

1. Jewelry, vs. 22 — 53. 

Seven kinds of jewelry are mentioned in the Word 
of God. Observe, mentioned, not commended ; for the 
adornment God approves is " a meek and quiet spirit, 
which is of great price " in His estimation. There 
were jewels for the forehead, nose, ears, arms and 
fingers; for the neck, breast and ankles. In these 
days the engagement gift is supposed to be a dia- 
mond. There are three kinds of diamonds : the 
African, the Californian, and the paste. How many 
of these latter are upon the fingers of poor, deceived 
girls the jewelers alone can tell. 

2. She has a new objective in life. 

Before her engagement she only lived to do the 
work of the day, please her parents, and gratify herself 
with the momentary pleasures growing out of her 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. Ill 

home-life and duties. Now she lives in preparation 
for her affianced, to make him happy, and to share 
his prosperity and reverses ; to minister to his necessi- 
ties and secure his approval are the aspirations of her 
heart. She would be looked upon in a new light and 
with very different feelings by all her friends and 
acquaintances, and she would entertain for them an 
affection very different from that which she cherished 
before her engagement. By this act she has enhanced 
her importance immensely in the minds of all ; for 
not only is she engaged, and to a noble and wealthy 
prince, but she is in the way to the attainment of that 
most ardently coveted boon of every rightly educated 
woman, — marriage and maternity. 

3. A new name. 

She is no more remembered or spoken of as 
Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel, but Rebekah, the 
wife of Isaac. Whatever honor, glory, or immortality 
is associated with the name of Isaac she is to share. 

4. A new residence. 

She has forever cut loose from the old home, with 
its endeared associations. She bids good-by to old 
friends and playmates, old loves and practices. West- 
ward, through dense forests, over arid plains, and 
across precipitous mountain ranges waits her spouse, 
and there is to be her home, her service, and her joy. 
True, hostile tribes and dangerous foes are between 
them ; but she has engaged herself to Isaac, and for 



112 THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 

that love and person she smiles at all difficulties, and 
is prepared to brave every peril. 

And, dear young woman, as I stand here and ap- 
peal to you to engage yourself to the Lord Jesus, you 
query, " What shall be my engagement gift?" It 
shall be 

A new name. " To him that overcometh will I 
give " " a white stone, and in the stone a new name 
written. " Rev. 2: 17. "I will write upon him the 
name of my God." Rev. 3 : 12. 

A new nature. "Whereby are given unto us ex- 
ceeding great and precious promises ; that by these 
ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having 
escaped the corruption that is in the world through 
lust." 2 Peter 1 : 4. 

A new service. " And He saith unto them, Follow 
me, and I will make you fishers of men." Matt. 4 : 19. 

A new treasure. " Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt 
be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the 
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and 
come follow me." Matt. 19 : 21. "Knowing in your- 
selves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring 
substance." Heb. 10 : 34. 

A new peace. " Therefore being justified by faith, 
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus 
Christ : by whom also we have access by faith into 
this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of 
the glory of God." Rom. 5:1—2. These, and 
much more ; for " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 113 

neither have entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love Him." 
1 Cor. 2 : 9. 

Compare Rebekah's poverty with Isaac's wealth, her 
obscurity with his prominence, and can you wonder 
that the candid and simple-hearted girl should have 
been completely captivated with gifts so varied and 
valuable, and an alliance so distinguished and en- 
nobling? With your superior light of Christ's char- 
acter, and the blessedness and dignity of His service, 
every one of you should presently engage yourselves 
to this Son of the Father, and receive these magnifi- 
cent gifts at His hand. I would to God I could 
persuade you of the nobility and incomparable glory 
of such an espousal ! 

V. Her departure. 

"And Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they 
rode upon the camels, and followed the man : and the 
servant took Rebekah, and went his way" (v. 61). 
How touching and life-like this narrative ! This last 
picture in the closing drama, how it moves all hearts ! 
At such a moment how tears mingle with our rejoic- 
ings, as sunshine and rain-drops in April day ! 

When a dear child stands on that narrow line that 
fringes the border between girl and wife ; when she looks 
backward for the last time, and feels, "Henceforth 
my look must be forward and outward;" when she 
parts with the tried and trusted love of parents for the 
untried yet trusted love of another, ah ! this is a time 

10* 



114 THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 

and an occasion for tears, and none but a madman or 
a fool could lightly feel and act on the eve of an 
event so fraught with misery or bliss. Go, gather up 
the disappointed wives, the broken-hearted and abused 
women who have intrusted themselves to perfidious 
wretches to have their love requited with indifference, 
their meek devotion with blows, their faithful service 
with curses, and their long-suffering silence with cold 
neglect ; and as you look upon their bent forms, wan 
and pale countenances, covered thick and deep with 
lines of suffering, tell me, can you lightly regard or 
thoughtlessly take the step that may number you with 
that long line of disappointed and abused sufferers? 
Rebekah steps into the unknown. With faith in 
the God of her parents, to whom she has consecrated 
herself, and now* commits her steps, she speaks the 
dear old word " good-by " ! One word explains her con- 
duct :• " Engaged " ! This is the magnet that attracts 
from home and friends to distant scenes and labors. 
How those parents and that brother would look after 
that retreating caravan ! Down through the valley, 
over the plain, ascending the mountain side, it slowly 
moves. Did Rebekah weep ? Perhaps so. Did she 
ever and anon turn and look backward with an 
occasional sigh? Possibly. She was leaving sight, 
and was now moving by faith. That she knew ; this 
she believed. With the retirement of the sun, the 
travelers disappear from parental watchers, and home 
and hill-side, and well and flocks, are hidden from the 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 115 

daughter's vision. It is night ; but faith trusts for the 
dawning of to-morrow, and it dawns joyous, bright 
and blessed. " Weeping may endure for a night, but 
joy cometh in the morning." 

In Iowa there resides a lady, a friend of mine, who 
came all the way from Germany for her affianced, and 
married after reaching Dubuque. She found him kind 
and true, and they live happily in their wedded love, 
God having blessed them with a family of beautiful 
children and a home and competence. Another girl, 
engaged, left her home in England to meet and marry 
her betrothed in the City of New York. Alone she 
braved the perils of the deep to go to a strange coun- 
try, and make her home among strangers. Reaching 
the dock, her intended met her on board of the 
steamer ; and to her horror and dismay he was so 
intoxicated as to be stupidly silly. She left the steamer 
and accompanied him to a hotel. With tears stream- 
ing down her cheeks and the utter agony of her heart 
choking her utterance, she kindly but firmly declared 
her purpose never to marry him. She could leave 
home and friends, and suffer the sea-sickness and 
encounter the dangers of an ocean voyage ; but she 
had not the courage, or rather fool-hardiness, sufficient 
to risk her future happiness with a drinking husband. 
By the same steamer she returned to England. She 
was a brave and sensible girl. 

You are asked to leave home and friends and all 
for this Jesus, but not without a consideration. Hear 



116 THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 

it : " There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, 
or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or 
lands, for My sake, and the Gospel's, but he shall receive 
an hundred fold now in this time, houses, and brethren, 
and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with 
persecutions (trials) ; and in the world to come, 
eternal life." Mark 10 : 29—30. 

It is said a gentleman in England was showing his 
possessions to a friend. Taking him to a an elevated 
spot, he waved his hand and said, "This is my estate." 
Pointing in a certain direction, he said, " Do you see 
that farm? That is mine." Pointing in a different 
direction, he said, " Do you see that house? That is 
mine." After he had finished marking the boundary 
of his estates, his friend said, " Do you see that vil- 
lage in the foreground?" "Yes." "Well, there resides 
a woman who can say more than you can ! " " Indeed ! 
What?" "She can say, ' Christ is mine' 1 /" 

Young women, you may have pleasant homes and 
kind friends ; you may be living lives free from great 
sorrow or oppressing cares ; you may enjoy the bloom 
of health with an exemption from physical suffering ; 
your society may be sought by worthy young men ; 
life's future may seem full of golden sunshine ; and 
yet, with all this, you are not satisfied. I am sent, a 
messenger from God, to ask you in marriage for His 
Son ! This proposal, if accepted by you, will enrich 
your true life, filling it with sweetest music, constant 
sunshine, purest enjoyments, noblest delights, the most 



THE WOMAN ENGAGED. 117 

exalted companionships, and most God-like service ! 
Come, now and here : say, as did your sister, " I will 
go with this man," and from this hour your life will 
have a new significance, and your living a nobler and 
holier end ! 

"Wedded love'is founded on esteem, 
Which the fair merits of the mind engage ; 
For those are charms that never can decay : 
But time, that gives new whiteness to the swan, 
Improves their lustre." 




THE WOMAN MARRIED. 



" For thy Maker is thine husband." ISA. 54 : 5. 

" There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The 
unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she 
may be holy, both in body and in spirit : but she that is mar- 
ried, careth for the things of the world, how she may please her 
husband." 1 Cor. 7 : 34. 



SHE three preceding sermons of the course have 
•^ been to the irreligious especially : this and the suc- 
ceeding one are particularly intended for the Christian 
woman. In the former, Christ was a suitor : here you 
have accepted \ and it is to the obligations and bene- 
fits growing out of this new relationship that I desire 
definitely to call your attention. 

In this sermon we will show the obligations , and in 
the next the benefits. 

I have chosen two texts, the better to illustrate and 
enforce the thoughts I have in view. The one affirms 
that God is your husband ; the other that you are to 
study to please this husband. For the wife to study 
to please the husband, without a sacrifice of religious 
principle, is right and commendable, viewed from any 
standpoint. 

With this thought before you, it seems to me you 



THE WOMAN MARRIED. 119 

would be moved to greater care in the selection of a 
partner for life. Many a pious young girl, raised in a 
Christian home, has been betrayed into marrying an 
irreligious man, who had no sympathy with her reli- 
gious views or practices ; and she soon found she must 
go alone to God's house, and incur her husband's 
displeasure or sneer for so doing, and hence left the 
church, where her face was regularly seen, and her 
voice constantly heard in song, prayer, and praise. 
From this she was led into sin, — the opera, the thea- 
tre, the dance, wicked associates and impure litera- 
ture. Thus, from compromising her principles to 
please her husband, she has lost her soul, having for- 
feited God's favor, and that of her husband too. Of 
how many thousands this is too terribly true, eternity 
will alone reveal ! 

A Christian woman should marry a Christian man ; 
for "How can two walk together except they be 
agreed?" If your irreligious husband shall be too 
refined and manly to oppose you, are you strong 
enough to pull the boat against the current with him 
in it ? or can you bear yourself afloat, while he, motion- 
less, clings to you? Can a bird mount upward 
with one wing broken? Neither can you, with an 
unbelieving husband, without an effort so unnaturally 
extraordinary as few are capable of making. 

A wife is married to one man. 

Monogamy, and not polygamy, is God's order and 
intendment. If there ever was a time when polygamy 



120 THE WOMAN MARRIED. 

seemed a necessity, it was in the beginning of the 
propagation of the race. Surely, it could have been 
no more difficult for the Almighty to have created 
twenty Eves than one ; nor would the suffering to 
Adam have been greater ! We can conceive how the 
population might have been multiplied in their num- 
bers ; but right there, at that point, the Divine pro- 
nounced his condemnation of the monstrous crime by 
giving to Adam one wife. 

When you are once engaged, if you respect that 
covenant, all others are abandoned ; and when mar- 
Tied you become the property of another. There is a 
mutual surrendering of rights which existed before 
marriage for the one absolute and supreme love of 
each other. You may not receive the gifts and atten- 
tions of others, as before your marriage ; you may not 
entertain them, and give them your smile and society, 
as before ; you are not your own, to be used now as 
you please ; you have consecrated yourself in the most 
solemn manner to be the affectionate, tender, loving, 
dutiful wife of another ; and if you are worthy of that 
sacred name of wife, that husband will have all your 
love, entire and undivided. The infamy of too many 
modern marriages is that parties marry for unholy pur- 
poses, and feel at liberty to annul the compict when 
fancy or caprice may desire. 

The true wife feels herself married to her husband, 
for "better or for worse," until death parts them ; and 
to this thought, and feeling, and the duties springing 



THE WOMAN MARRIED. 121 

therefrom, she devotes her life with the entirety of her 
affection and being, allowing nothing to come between 
them or take precedence, except only God and His 
claims, which should always have priority. 

Marriage is invariably a voluntary contract, entered 
into by the contracting parties of their own free will 
and accord. This is the rule. A woman chooses her 
own husband, — an awful prerogative with which a 
beneficent and wise Creator has intrusted you, — and 
how any woman can venture to exercise it without the 
utmost deliberation, caution, and earnest prayer, in- 
volving, as it does, so much of happiness or misery, 
is to me inexplicable ! So of this spiritual marriage. 
It is free : you act according to your own volition. 
The good and the bad, the right and the wrong, God 
and Satan, are the two suitors constantly presenting 
their claims to every soul. Both cannot be rejected 
while you resolve to abide in spiritual celibacy. One 
or the other you must choose and you do choose. 

In the case of those I now particularly address, you 
have chosen Christ as your husband, and, if Christian, 
the Holy Ghost has celebrated the nuptials ; " For as 
a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry 
thee : and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, 
so shall thy God rejoice over thee." Isa. 62 : 5. Be- 
cause of this relationship, St. Paul says, " Wherefore, 
my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by 
the body of Christ ; that ye should be married to 
another, even to him who is raised from the dead, 



122 THE WOMAN MARRIED. 

that we should bring forth fruit unto God." Rom. 
7:4; and so, also, in 2 Cor. 8:5: " And this they 
did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to 
the Lord, and unto us by the will of God." 

Here we see conversion is a marriage, voluntarily 
entered into, by which a human soul is united to the 
Almighty God ; and all the claims that rest upon the 
material wife to be faithful to her earthly husband, 
rest upon this spiritual wife to be true to her spiritual 
husband, God. You are His, in the entirety of your 
love, ability, and influence, against all other claimants 
whomsoever ; and she who can sport with another, or 
will suffer paramours to divide her love, or share her 
smiles and attentions, who will commit spiritual forni- 
cation "with the world, the flesh, and the Devil," is 
doomed by an irreversible decree of divorce that shall 
consign her to eternal pollution with her spiritual part- 
ners in crime. Be true to this Divine husband, and 
He will be true to you, adding to your joy each day, 
and rendering you increasingly illustrious because of 
the noble alliance. 

II. The true wife will study to please her husband. 

It is not harmful, under certain restrictions, for a 
married woman to make herself agreeable to others 
and to please others " for their good to edification ; " 
but she will study first to please her husband. This is 
the very essence of love : to gratify the object of that 
love. And here, as in other things, we find the words 
of the Master true : " It is more blessed to give than 



THE WOMAN MARRIED. 123 

to receive ; " for in giving pleasure to those we love, 
we increase our own pleasure, because we are happy 
in seeing them happy. 

This story is told of an English lady who visited the 
seraglio of the Sultan, at Constantinople. At a certain 
hour, the ladies of the seraglio, wives of the Sultan, re- 
tired, and appeared again in full, rich costume. The 
English lady expressed surprise, and asked, " Do you 
expect company?" "No." "Then why do you 
dress?" "For our husband, the Sultan: for whom 
do English ladies dress?" If ladies dressed to please 
their husbands, instead of somebody else, there would 
be more happy homes, and fewer divorces to disgrace 
children and curse society. The true wife will study 
the comfort, tastes, desires, and pleasures of her hus- 
band, and seek to gratify them as far as possible 
without violating her consciousness of duty or her 
compact with God. She will do her utmost to please 
her husband except sin. 

So the sincere Christian will study to know the will 
of God as her husband, and will cheerfully do it, at 
any cost, for the sake of pleasing Him. The soul 
married to God will feel 

" 'Tis worse than death my God to love, 
And not my God alone." 

The study of the Christian is " how he may please 
the Lord." 1 Cor. 7 : 32. He will not be conformed 
to this world ; but, "having been transformed " by this 



124 THE WOMAN MARRIED. 

new relationship, he seeks to do the " acceptable and 
perfect will of God," that in all things he may show 
the sincerity and strength of his love for God, to whom 
he was voluntarily affianced. This same thought is 
enforced by Paul in his injunction to the church in 
Thessalonica, when he says, " Furthermore then we 
beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord 
Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to 
walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and 
more." 1 Thess. 4:1. 

In this desire to please the husband only, the truly 
sanctified heart will say, " Whom have I in heaven 
but Thee? and there is none on earth that I desire 
beside Thee." 

Young women, as Christians, whom are you striving 
to please? Do you consort with the world, courting 
its smiles and seeking its caresses? conforming to its 
maxims or seeking to please its votaries? Lovingly 
do I warn you, that in dress, spirit, conduct, action, 
association, employment, you study to please Christ, 
your loving husband, else you may forfeit His smile, 
and lose His favor, '• which is better than life." 

III. The true wife is interested in her husband f s 
success. 

To him she gives her time, thought, means, and 
influence. Their interests are so essentially one that 
every reverse afflicts her as well as him ; every success 
cheers and gladdens her, as well as him. In order to 
aid him in his legitimate business enterprises, and 



THE WOMAN MARRIED. 125 

secure a mutually gratifying success, she will manage 
her household with the utmost prudence and dili- 
gence ; will carefully guard its expenditures and 
vigilantly supervise its management. Some husbands 
are always poor; for their shiftless wives can sweep 
more out of the back-door than they can carry in at 
the front. And with their extravagent slovenliness can 
destroy more dry goods than a man in moderate cir- 
cumstances can afford to buy. A woman to aid her 
husband need not be stingy, but prudent ; not refuse 
to give, but distrbute with a wise discrimination as to 
claimant and amount. Of all things abhorrently 
offensive to my soul, a stingy woman is the most 
pitiable. Made in God's image, and dependent upon 
the Christian religion for her true liberty, exaltation, 
and honor, to find her without liberality and large 
heartedness toward Christ and His cause argues a 
baseness or wickedness that I dare not trust myself to 
describe. The true wife while using her husband's 
property, — or, if you please, their joint property, — 
will use it for right purposes and good ends, not for 
mere ornamentation in the home or on her person ; 
not in gilded gewgaws to hang from ear, or neck, or 
wrist, as bells, to perpetually herald her folly, her weak- 
ness, and extravagance ; but in buying food for the 
hungry, clothing for the naked, medicines for the 
worthy sick, and by contributing to the cause of Christ 
for the speedy salvation of the world. If the husband, 
prompted by generous and trusting love, shall commit 



126 THE WOMAN MARRIED. 

to your care a liberal amount of funds, hold some of 
them in reserve for that day — so liable to come, yet 
so often unprepared for — when the lean years of 
want shall devour the full years of plenty. Thus one 
husband dealt with his trusted and appreciative wife. 
After some years of prosperity, came reverse after 
reverse, until he seemed inextricably involved. Re- 
turning to his home in the evening after a day of most 
wearing care and annoyance, he sat down to his tea, 
utterly exhausted in body and crushed in spirit ; his 
food was untasted. When his wife asked the cause of 
his sadness, he exclaimed, "I'm ruined ! Unless I 
can get help by twelve to-morrow, I must lose all ! " 
" How much is needed?" she asked. He answered 
"Twenty-five hundred dollars; and I have turned 
every stone to-day, and appealed to every friend, but 
without avail." He was overcome, and could say no 
more. Without uttering a word, his dear wife went to 
her room, and returning carried in her hand a little 
book that she placed lovingly in his hand, tenderly 
saying, "There, darling, see if that won't help you !" 
He found it was a bank book kept by his wife, showing 
that the prudent little woman had deposited to her 
husband's credit over three thousand dollars out of the 
pin-money he had lavishly given her in the sunny days 
of his prosperity ! Did he love her less? Was she 
less happy because of her prudence, and her ability 
to now relieve him from his embarrassments? Need 
I say there were more tears shed at the tea table that 



THE WOMAN MARRIED. 127 

evening? but they were tears of joy and gladness, 
springing from a grateful heart, such only as a truly 
loving husband can cherish for the thoughtful and 
affectionate wife to whose wisdom and prudence he is 
so consciously indebted for his happiness and success 
in life. 

So the true Christian woman will be deeply anxious 
for the success of Christ's cause in the earth. It will 
be her absorbing care and study, " How can I suc- 
ceed the interests of my dear husband ? How con- 
tribute to the enlargement of His possessions ? How 
extend His influence ? How add new territory to His 
domain? How can I be more fruitful, in bringing 
more sons and daughters unto God?" The fruitage 
of this holy wedlock will be a strong desire to "walk 
worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in 
every good work" Col. 1 : 10. When there is no 
more chance for fruitfulness, this loving spouse will 
weep, like the historic Alexander, because there are 
no more worlds to conquer, not for self, but for Christ, 
her husband ! In her single-eyed devotion to this 
husband, and the impulse of her passionate love for 
Him, she leaves friends and traverses continents and 
seas, penetrating to every nook and corner of this 
earth where humanity is found ; wherever, by the 
Divine lapidary, souls can be cut and burnished 
into jewels of value and beauty for Christ's adorning. 
Her musings by day and dreams by night, her sacrifice 
and frugality, is the utterance of the one controlling 



128 THE WOMAN MARRIED. 

feeling of her heart, " Where can I work and give 
to best succeed my husband's wishes and enhance his 
pleasure?" Is your soul thus held in a monopoly of 
devotion in giving and doing for this gracious husband ? 
Thrice blessed of women are you who are thus devoted 
to this husband's success ! 

IV. The poor girl in marrying a rich husband is 
freed from care. 

Take the domestic, hard worked sewing-girl, the 
poor, tired shop-girl, or the weary one who stands 
behind the counter all day, getting an insufficient in- 
come to meet the demands of the most rigid economy, 
constantly struggling and worrying over her inability 
to meet her real wants, and how great the change to 
marry a loving husband, possessed of ample means, 
from whose liberality she can readily supply all her 
wants. Life is no longer a battle to keep off hunger 
and rags. No more is the mind taxed with the difficult 
problem of how to make one dollar do the work of 
ten! In her new relation she finds abundance in 
every department. She is constantly surprised by 
unexpected gifts, many and costly, from her dear 
husband, until she finds nothing more for mind to 
desire or heart to wish. 

I heard of one young woman, whose father died 
the owner of two millions and a half of dollars. One 
million he gave to her outright ; the million and a 
half he invested for her. Still she feared poverty. She 
had a maiden aunt die in another city, who left a 



THE WOMAN MARRIED. 129 

legacy of fifty thousand for charitable purposes in her 
native city. But this girl undertook to break the will, 
and recover the fifty thousand dollars, under the plea 
that her aunt would have willed it to her had she not 
been unduly influenced. The riches of Croesus or 
wealth of the Golcondas would utterly fail to supply 
the wants of such an insatiable meanness ! 

Christian woman ! do you remember how poor you 
were when the Lord Jesus stooped to offer you His 
hand ? Have you forgotten how you starved for bread, 
thirsted even for water, and with what rags you sought 
tq cover your nakedness? And when, at last, the 
nuptials were celebrated, and you were fully and 
wholly His, what an abundance and to spare you have 
had since then ! How rich is my condition since I 
became the bride of Christ ! How ample, varied and 
choice my food ! How elaborate and costly my ap- 
parel ! How utterly without corroding care my life ! 
How blessedly Jesus frees His people from harrassing 
wants and inordinate cares. He manages all our 
interests, cares for all our wants, supplies all our needs, 
covers us with the costly robe of Righteousness, pur- 
chased with His own blood, and bids us cast all our 
care upon Him, assuring us he careth for us. 1 Peter 
5:7. 

V. The true wife will look up to and honor her 
husband. 

The woman who is married, and actuated by the 
love of a true wife, will find her highest honor in that 



130 THE WOMAN MARRIED. 

of her husband ; and his glory will be her covering. 
Should she possess ability, and be superior to her hus- 
band, she puts that ability and power into him, that by 
it he may be helped to honor and place. 

I know a man who is credited with being very able 
and brilliant, — now a professor in a prominent col- 
lege, — whose lectures and sermons are carefully su- 
pervised by his wife. This is to her honor. She does 
not wish to take the place of her husband, nor to 
secure a prominence for herself at the expense of 
retiring him ; but, working with her silent power and 
influence upon and through him, seeks to lift him into 
the foreground, while she shall be only seen like the 
ivy clinging to the rugged oak. A true wife will con- 
done and extenuate the failings of her husband ; will 
extol his virtues ; will aid his strength and supplement 
his weakness ; will honor him at all times, in all places, 
and before all persons. 

When Mr. Disraeli retired from his first premier- 
ship, he was offered a place among the hereditary 
aristocracy, with the title of earl. He declined it, with 
the intimation that if there was any reward thought to 
be deserved, he wished it conferred upon his wife, to 
whom he attributed all his success. On the day he 
retired from power, his wife took her place among the 
noble ladies of England by the title of Vicountess 
Beaconsfield. Once, in a crisis of his career, he was 
to explain his financial scheme to the House. He 
entered his carriage, absorbed in his theme, his wife 



THE WOMAN MARRIED. 131 

quietly taking a seat beside him. In getting in, her 
finger was caught by the door, which, shutting upon it> 
held it so fast that she could not withdraw it. Fearful 
of driving figures and arguments from his head, she 
uttered no cry nor made any movement until they 
reached the House ; nor did Disraeli hear of it till 
long after. All that evening this noble woman and 
faithful wife sat in the gallery, that her husband's quick 
eye might not miss her from it, bearing her pain like a 
martyr and like a true woman who loves. 

So the soul devoted to Christ will extol His virtues, 
and sing of His glories, and talk of His love, until all 
observers shall cry out, " Behold, what love ! " She 
will declare, " My beloved is white and ruddy, the 
chiefest among ten thousand. " " His mouth is most 
sweet : yea, He is altogether lovely." Sol. Songs, 
5 : 10 — 16. She cries, " Whom have I in heaven but 
Thee, and there is none upon the earth I desire beside 
Thee.' , She will sing, " O that men would praise the 
Lord for His goodness to the children of men ; " " O 
taste and see that God is good " ! 

Do you thus extol your Divine husband? Do you 
thus strive to please Him ? Are you happy only as 
His cause succeeds, and depressed and sad when 
reverses overtake it ? Do you live and labor to exalt 
Him, rather than yourself? Is your purest joy found 
in His presence, and your profoundest pleasure in 
communing with Him? 

Near the coast of* England is a reef of rocks on 



132 THE WOMAN MARRIED. 

which stands a light-house. One very dark night 
there was a terrible storm, and by signals the keeper 
was made aware of the fact that a ship, with many 
passengers on board, had struck the reef. The storm 
was furious, while the waters were lashed into frenzy. 
There happened to be no one with him that night but 
his daughter, a young girl eighteen years of age. She 
volunteered to help him, saying, " Father, if you'll try, 
I'll go with you." The life-boat was launched. She 
took her seat, and pulled the oar opposite her father. 
They reached the wreck, and safely brought off nine 
souls. Noble girl ! her heroism was told throughout 
the kingdom. England has her Grace Darling, and 
America her Ida Lewis ; now let Christ have in you a 
devotion and courage the equal of these in rescuing 
the shipwrecked sisters around you ! To the rescue, 
O woman ! 



THE WOMAN'S DOWER. 



"And the same man had four daughters, virgins, which did 
prophesy." Acts 21 : 9. 

•E have here a glimpse of an interesting family ; 
and we can but wish we could know more of 
the father and his four girls. Then, too, we should 
like to know something of the mother ; for the infer- 
ence is natural, and the proof strong, that where the 
children are deeply pious there was a pious mother 
before them, to whose influence, guidance, and pray- 
ers they were largely indebted for their Christian char- 
acter. It is very probable that the father of these girls 
was Philip the Deacon, and that he and Philip the 
Evangelist are one and the same person. If sq, then 
it is probably twenty-five years since we heard of this 
good man before ; and then he was in the midst of a 
great revival in Samaria, from which he was called by 
the Spirit to go to the south of Jerusalem, on the Gaza 
road, for the enlightenment and salvation of the Ethi- 
opian eunuch. After this event, and the persecutions 
at Jerusalem, he most probably removed to Caesarea, 
the seaport of Jerusalem, from which city it was dis- 
tant some sixty-eight miles. Here, in the Caesarea, 



134 THE WOMAN'S DOWER. 

that is rendered famous in New-Testament history, the 
great apostle to the Gentiles and the great evangelist 
met. No doubt each had heard of the other, and 
this opportunity to enjoy each other's society would 
be mutually agreeable. 

Interesting and profitable as it would be to study the 
history of these two great men, and the occasion of 
this meeting, we must leave them to look at an equally 
important question : viz., the Christian woman's dower. 

Dower, according to Webster, is a gift, or fortune ; 
that with which one is gifted or endowed. It may be 
property, poetry, song, music, art or goodness, or 
several of these combined. The question before us is, 
" With what does Christianity endow woman ? What 
are her privileges and prerogatives as the spouse of 
Christ?" At the outset I find two claimants, with 
neither of whom I fully agree. 

I. Those who deny to woman any participation in 
the public service of the church. 

They are good people, pious and intelligent, devoted 
to the cause of God, and contributing in many ways 
to its success in the earth. They are deliberate in 
their judgment that the women should be silent in 
the churches, predicating their belief upon two pas- 
sages in the Word of God : viz., 1 Cor. 14 : 34, and 1 
Tim. 2:11 — 12. The first reads thus : " Let your 
women keep silence in the churches : for it is not 
permitted unto them to speak; but they are com- 
manded to be under obedience as also saith the law." 



THE WOMAN'S DOWER. 135 

The second, " Let the woman learn in silence with all 
subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor 
to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. " 
It seems to me, if Paul, in these passages, means to 
be understood as entering his protest against women 
taking any part in the public services of the church, 
it will be very difficult to harmonize or explain 
his teaching in 1 Cor. 11:4 — 5, where he says, 
" Every man praying or prophesying, having his head 
covered, dishonereth his head. But every woman that 
prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered, dis- 
honored her head : for that is even all one as if she 
were shaven." Now, if Paul forbids women taking 
any part in public service, why should he forbid them 
to pray "with the head uncovered "? Is this not tan- 
tamount to allowing the service, when he tells them 
how it shall be done? To prescribe the manner in 
which a service is to be done is certainly equivalent to 
ordering the performance of that service. We are not 
commanded to go into our closets to pray ; but when 
we go there we are instructed what to do, and because 
of this instruction we all recognize the imperativeness 
of the duty. I cannot now pause to discuss this point 
more fully. 

II. I cannot agree with those who claim for her 
all the rights of her brother. 

I know the preponderance of women in the church 
and in the State. I know, too, the ability of woman 
for good or evil ; that, good, she can do more than 



136 the woman's dower. 

man, or, if bad, she is immensely more destructive in 
her influence than her brother. I am not ignorant of 
the power of her sympathy and love, and I therefore 
want her actively at work in God's cause. I cannot 
think, however, that }his activity demands license to 
preach, or ordination ; for 

1. Christ called no woman to the apostleship. 

This could not have been an oversight on the part 
of the Saviour. To His mind, this question, with 
many others, was without doubt present. He could 
but know it would come up, and would be discussed. 
By one act or word He could have settled it forever : 
that act was not performed, that word was not spoken ; 
therefore He did settle it by His definite and positive 
negation, in that He neither called a woman with the 
twelve nor gave the apostles authority to do so. 

2. He sent no woman with the seventy. 

This fact is an equally significant one. It is no 
doubt true that Israelitish women did, at times, per- 
form an inspirational service, as Deborah and others, 
and therefore there could be no objection on the 
ground of prejudice against calling and sending the 
sisters with these brethren. Yet we find not the name 
of a single female among the names mentioned. I 
insist this could not have been an oversight. It must 
have been intentional ; and by His own acts the Mas- 
ter gives His warrant against the licensing and ordain- 
ing of women to the office and work of the ministry. 



the woman's dower. 137 

3. The apostles ordained no women. 

How are we to account for this omission, except 
that they believed they were acting conformably to the 
mind of the Saviour ? There was a greater demand for 
the services of women in the ministry then than 
now, since we are assured that hundreds of men stand 
ready for the work, who profess to have had the Divine 
call, and yet there is no field for them to till ! If ever 
the argument in favor of licensing women had any 
force, it has none now, if it be true, as affirmed by 
those who ought to know whereof they speak, that 
the work is so fully supplied that hundreds of willing 
reapers stand ready to pick up the sickle from the 
relaxed grasp of the dying toiler. Thousands of 
young men are knocking at the doors of the recruiting 
stations, begging admission into the ranks of the army 
that is in the field of combat, and yet they are kept 
out with the assurance, " The army is full, and there 
is no room for you ! " Abundance of room in the 
ranks, and among the miners and sappers, the frontier 
corps, the outlying force in the trenches, and vidette 
posts on the enemy's lines; but to be there means 
short rations, hard work, constant conflict, difficulty 
of promotion in the earthly ranks, because of its great 
distance from headquarters. It means, too, great 
faith, courage, self - denial, peace, joy, victory, the 
taking many prisoners for Christ, an abundant entrance, 
and glorious coronation, amid the acclaim of angels 
in the by-and-by ! If there is no room for the men, 



138 the woman's dower. 

and the strong, stalwart sons of the church, who are 
graduated at the schools of the prophets, can find no 
employment, let us stop this foolish clamor about 
licensing women to preach, until God in His providence 
shall give full employment to the men, and open more 
fields than we can find men to cultivate ; or until 
some one shall get a new revelation that men shall stay 
at the plow, anvil, loom, and in the house, while 
the women shall do the work of the ministry. 

III. But did not women prophesy ? 

They certainly did, and I trust always will, in that 
same sense and manner, sanctioned by the Scriptures. 

The primary meaning of the word " Prophecy," 
both in the Old and New Testament Scriptures, is to 
foretell future events ; hence to reveal new things. 
This is its highest and first meaning. Its secondary 
use is to speak to comfort and edification in the 
church, as is clearly taught by Paul, in first Corinthians 
fourteenth chapter, from the third to the fifth verses. 

" But he that prophesieth, speaketh unto men to 
edification, and exhortation, and comfort. He that 
speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but 
he that prophesieth edifieth the church. I would that 
ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophe- 
sied : for greater is he that prophesieth than he that 
speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the 
church may receive edifying." 

When we read of woman's prophesying, it is inva- 
riably as a special spirtual communication, and not as 



the woman's dower. 139 

a stated service. To me it seems remarkable that if 
it was intended for women to take the same part in 
public church services that the men do, that the 
prophetic women of the Old Testament were of the 
same rank and order as their brothers, the Prophets, 
that their names and prophecies were not recorded 
among the major or minor prophets, and not in ob- 
scure places and in brief detatched utterances, as we 
find them. Surely, this cannot be a mistake ! God 
must have meant to teach something by it ! What ? 
That woman's call is for marriage and maternity ; her 
duty with home and its demands. Public service, as 
demanded by these irrepressibles, interferes with and 
unfits woman for these first and holiest duties which a 
beneficent Creator has entailed upon her. God im- 
planted the desire for wifedom and motherhood in 
the female heart ; and its eradication is only possible 
by the most monstrous educational perversion of head 
and heart. That mental and moral training that will 
educate the mind and heart away from her womanly 
instincts and deeply implanted desires, that will stimu- 
late to a disobedience of the wise commands of the 
loving Heavenly Father, rather than a sweet compli- 
ance with them, is both false and vicious, and should 
receive a prompt and universal rebuke. If God calls 
women to preach, then must He negative and nullify 
His own commands. Either she must not marry, or 
she must not preach; for the duty implied in the 
former will clearly unfit her for the latter. 



140 THE WOMAN'S DOWER. 

IV. What, then, you ask, is her dower ? 

I am glad to have the privilege of answering this 
question ; for I am sure we shall find a common 
ground of amity, where we may all stand, and on 
which we may all shake hands. I yield to no one in 
my respect for woman's ability, and in my earnestness 
to have all her powers and influence fully consecrated 
in holy activities for Christ and His kingdom. There 
is much she can do as well as man, some things better 
than man, and some things that, possibly, he cannot 
do at all. No woman need be idle, wasting her time 
in insignificant trifles, or squander her hours in un- 
womanly quietness, or pine for larger fields in which 
to toil, or a more conspicuous place among the busy 
workmen. She is at the fountain-head of all power ; 
the source of irradiating influence is in her home and 
with her children. Among the mightiest, if not the 
mightiest force in the social world is the tear or smile 
of a child. Dr. John Hall once commenced an 
address before a convention of Sunday-school workers 
by saying, " I begin, where all power begins, with 
the child." 

Not in the pulpit, not in the forum, the medical pro- 
fession, on the stage, in concert; or in legislative halls 
are you to look for your field of most ennobling and 
exalting labor ; but in your own home, by your own 
fireside, surrounded by the infantile immortality that a 
beneficent God has intrusted to your care, can you 
find occasion and employment for all the genius you 



THE WOMAN'S DOWER. 141 

may possess, and as great a responsibility as a rational 
being will be willing to assume. 

What, then, is her dower ? I answer : 

1. God-likeness at home. 

To understand the Divine will respecting yourself 
and those committed to your care ; to do the duties 
lovingly, patiently and faithfully that He has imposed 
upon you ; to do them with meekness and humility ; 
is indeed a most exalted service. Such should be the 
purity of your character, the holiness of your heart and 
life, and the divinity of your conduct, that husband 
and children, returning home at night, after a day's 
contact with the defiling and the sinful, should at once 
be lifted into a realm of purity and spiritual power* 
By your touch and word, spirit and influence, they 
should be purged from all contaminations of foulness, 
and be returned to life's duties the next day more 
impervious to its snares and its seductive wiles. Here 
I think we all agree with each other and with Paul, 
who bears this noble testimony to a pious woman 
whose acquaintance he enjoyed : " I call to remem- 
brance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt 
first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice ; 
and I am persuaded that in thee also." 2. Tim 1 : 5. 
And then his fatherly exhortation to Timothy, his son 
in the Gospel : " And that from a child thou hast 
known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make 
thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in 
Christ Jesus." The Holy Ghost, through Paul, in- 



142 THE woman's dower. 

structs young women thus : " I will therefore that the 
younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, 
give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproach- 
fully." Because of a faithful endeavor on the part of 
Eunice and Lois to do this, the church had a Timo- 
thy ; a godly Monica gave to Christianity an Augus- 
tine ; the piety of a Mrs. Doddridge made possible a 
Philip Doddridge ; and the motherly fidelity of Susan- 
nah Wesley gave to the world the immortal John 
Wesley. 

2. Outside of home are fields you may cultivate. 
As a visitor of families you are superior to man ; 
for you can have access to the homes of the people at 
-all times and under all circumstances, obtaining inter- 
views with persons and in places from which we men 
are rightly excluded. As tract distributor you can 
find abundant opportunity for all your time and ability, 
both natural and gracious. In Bible reading there is 
a legitimate call for your service. To enter the homes 
of the people, while the inmates, mothers, wives, and 
daughters, are engaged in their domestic duties, and 
read to them portions of the Word of God, without 
in the least hindering them in their work, is to my 
mind a most Divine occupation for a pious heart ! 
How would many a tired wife, toiling and disheartened 
mother, be encouraged and strengthened for their 
arduous labors, by a call from a godly woman on such 
a mission ; and how would her nerves and spirit be 
soothed, by the tender reading of the story of the 



THE woman's dower. 143 

woman of Samaria ; the recovery of the Syrophenician's 
daughter ; the healing of the poor woman who had 
spent all her living for health, and yet found it not ; 
or the notorious sinner who stood behind Jesus in the 
house of the proud Pharisee, shedding her penitential 
tears in unuttered woe, and to whom the compassion- 
ate and loving Saviour spake the blessed words, " Thy 
sins are forgiven thee ! " Then in the Bible School as 
a teacher, or in the church as conductor of a class or 
female prayer meeting, you can do most effectual ser- 
vice. One duty of the prophet was to teach the 
doctrines of religion. Because of your quick-witted- 
ness, your larger sympathies, your more intimate 
knowledge of the child nature, you are, perhaps, better 
fitted to teach the young than man. Your spirit is 
more tender, and your manner is usually more winning, 
so that, as a rule, you are more successful in this work 
than we are. Paul gives some good advice on this 
head, in Titus 2:3 — 5. 

In Acts 18 : 24, we learn that the pious Priscilla 
joined her husband, and took the young and eloquent 
Apollos home with them to instruct him more fully in 
the Word of God. Then in song, prayer and testimony 
in the great congregation you have an opportunity for 
your utmost capabilities. Sing like Miriam and Deb- 
orah, pray like Hannah, witness for Him like Anna, 
and testify for the risen Christ like Mary and her 
coadjutors! Work? Bless you, fields all about you 
are white to the harvest ! With more song, prayer, and 



144 THE woman's dower. 

testimony in the fullness of the spirit, what awaken- 
ings there would be ! Faith would be triumphant, a 
spirit of conviction would seize the people ; earnest 
inquiries after the better way would be seen on all 
sides ; and penitential confessions would be heard at 
every service ! O Christian woman ! never was such 
a dower as yours. In the amplitude of the field, the 
diversity of its demands, the abundance of the re- 
sources, the efficiency of the means, the assurance of 
success, the certainty of the reward, and the immortal 
blessedness of the fruitage and the gleaning, it is un- 
paralleled in its grandeur and glory, its inspiration and 
crowning ! Out ! out in God's name and for human- 
ity's weal, ye Christian women, along these avenues of 
opened usefulness, to gather fruit for the eternal life 
and garner sheaves unto the eternal harvest ! 



-7^FC^ 



Special Miscellany, 



13 



MY FIRST RIDE ON A LOCOMOTIVE. 



*HAT a wonderful creation of beauty, grace 
and utility, the engine is ! Has genius ever 
given to the world anything more nearly human? 
How like the muscle engine of the heart it is : how 
actually human ! It leaps, walks, runs, eats, drinks, 
sleeps, coughs, speaks, whistles, inhales and exhales, 
and like man, too, sometimes is on the track, and 
sometimes is off; and when off, like him, too, scatters 
misery and death. 

For years I have been an ardent lover of the loco- 
motive, and have secretly desired to stand on her 
foot-board when in motion ; and at last, through the 
politeness of the conductor, and the kindness of the 
engineer, on the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad, I 
had my long-cherished desire gratified. The station 
was reached, the conductor called me by name : I 
quickly followed forward to the engine. An introduc- 
tion to the engineer, a spring from the ground, and I 
stood on the platform of the lordly locomotive. 

Talk of a child strutting in his new boots for the 
first time, or a country boy or girl feasting their eyes 
on the beauties of the shop-window and feeling the 
indescribable sensations produced by the sights and 



148 MY FIRST RIDE ON A LOCOMOTIVE. 

sounds of the new world around them ! nay : think of 
the bliss of lovers when for the first time lips meet in 
the mute expression of pure, fervent love, and tell the 
rapturous joy if you can ! Well, I have experienced 
all these kinds of joyous emotions and pleasurable 
delights ; but the sensation I felt when my foot first 
pressed the platform of that locomotive, was, if not 
superior, at least unlike them all. I was all eyes, ears 
and nerves. I knew enough not to ask many ques- 
tions. I was too delighted to talk : I was in a happy 
dream, and a new world surrounded me. The pilot 
(for such I shall call the engineer), with pleasing 
sternness, pointed me to a seat on the right-hand side, 
where himself sits, or stands, to manage his wonderful 
steed. My look was forward, the direction of hope. 
My legs were well under me. In a moment a little 
bell struck over the pilot's head. (The conductor's 
cord runs from the rear car to this bell, and by means 
of this he puts himself in telegraphic communication 
with the pilot.) The echoes of the little bell had not 
yet died away when the fireman struck his bell that 
is suspended on the back of the iron horse This was 
a signal for the start, a warning to clear the track. 
Gently did the pilot raise the lever, and then caress- 
ingly placing his hand on the throttle-valve, pulled 
carefully and I thought kindly. The fiery steed 
snorted, the wheels revolved, the ponderous mass 
moved and in a moment was instinct with life, and a 
thrill of delight went all over me. Moving? Yes, 



MY FIRST RIDE ON A LOCOMOTIVE. 149 

moving. Faster and yet faster went the drivers, as 
again and again the pilot touched that mysterious 
little lever right over the door of the fire-chamber, 
saying, very kindly, "I guess I'll give her another 
notch or two." Then the fireman attracted my atten- 
tion, as he began to pour coal into the fiery maw of 
this black craft. He fills his shovel, turns quartering 
toward the engine's mouth, pulls on a chain, and the 
black lips open. Now look down that red throat, 
into that fiery pit. Did you ever see anything like it? 
See those flames : how like serpents they curl, twist, 
entwine around each other, now shoot forward, now 
retire. Hear their terrible hissing. They spit a fiery 
venom at you ; they blow in very hate ; nay : they 
roar in terrible defiance. The fireman, though he has 
seen them many a time, and is familiar with their fear- 
ful choruses, yet even he seems to dread them ; for as 
soon as the door opens, the well-filled shovel empties 
its contents in the midst of the voracious flames, and 
is immediately closed again. I felt a thrill of horror 
pass over me as I heard its terrible roaring and looked 
into its blue and whitened flames ; but I soon turned 
my eyes before me, glad to be relieved from the ter- 
rific spectre beneath. The noble steed was getting 
well warmed to her work. On, on she flew. There, 
just before us, the road curves; my eyes look right 
into the hill. How shall we escape it? Will our 
maddened steed keep the course? Nearer yet we 
come to the point of danger. I hold my breath ; I 

13* 



150 MY FIRST RIDE ON A LOCOMOTIVE. 

am conscious the engine is rising on one side and 
sinking on the other ; gracefully she hugs the rail and 
swings the curve. I thank God, and breathe freely, 
for that peril is past. Now there is a long, straight 
course before us. Oh, how she flies, looking neither 
to the right nor to the left, but on, on, straight onward 
she speeds, as if goaded to madness or seeking to 
escape a pursuing Nemesis. I feel the panting of her 
beating side ; I catch the hot steam that comes from 
her dilated nostrils ; I think she must break down. 
Her bell is rung, another quarter-post is past : a 
whistle, and we leisurely stop at the next station. 
Her bell rings again, and we are off. Look forward 
at the drivers now : see how they move. Cast your 
eyes down, and look at what should be the end of the 
ties. They are ties no longer; they are a line of 
white, never broken, only changed sometimes to a 
dark or black line, as they are clean or dirty, dry or 
wet. Away ahead of you there is a speck on the 
course. You wonder what it is. You look again and 
again. At last it moves. As you sweep onward, you 
see in it a human being. You feel like screaming to 
him, " Escape for your life !" Nearer still, when — 
blessed relief ! — he turns and looks, sees his danger, 
steps from the track, holds his hat with both hands, 
and we are far beyond him. 

I have felt the excitement caused from the exces- 
sive use of whiskey, and I have heard of the power of 
opium to create in the mind an Elysian paradise 



MY FIRST RIDE ON A LOCOMOTIVE. 151 

where imaginary delights feast the senses, and I know 
and have seen the effect of ether, as it thrilled the 
body and filled it with supernatural delight; but, 
reader, if you want a pure pleasure, an excitement 
that shall enrich your being and make you more and 
more respect yourself and your fellow-man, a sensa- 
tion that will fill your mind, and by its memory feed 
your nerves with delight forever, then ride on a loco- 
motive that is the propulsion, life and being of an 
express train. 

How wonderful is that Being who has created us 
with power to produce machinery so complicated and 
useful ! Let us forever adore His wisdom and love ! 



A TAKE-OFF ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 



" I grant I am but woman ; but withal 
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife; 
I grant I am a woman; but withal, 
A woman well-reputed; Cato's daughter. 
Think you, I am no stronger than my sex, 
Being so fathered and so husbanded." 

— Shaks. Julius C<zsar. 



TSffUR WRONGS ! what a volume in a word. Long, 
^^ long years of oppression and wrong are hidden in 
the centuries of the past, behind those two words — 
our wrongs. We have suffered patiently, if not always 
uncomplainingly. Some noble, liberal-minded of the 
"sterner sex" have seen the wrongs under which we 
suffer and have pitied us, and under the influence of 
a generous impulse, tendered us their sympathy. Men, 
in our silence, have read submission, and in our pa- 
tience, contentment. It was the last pound that broke 
the camePs back, and so added wrong will sooner or 
later be resisted by us. The Druse rose to smite the 
Ottoman tyrant ; the Sepoy fought his filching mistress ; 
Poland and Hungary have struggled to the death for 
their rights ; America, in defense of freedom and jus- 



A TAKE-OFF ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 153 

tice pledged her sacred honor, and her life, on the 
arbitrament of the sword ; and the insulted, brow- 
beaten, cursed and oft-defied North, rose in her 
might, and smote the usurping and insulting South. 

We have suffered long, hoping and praying that the 
time would come when our rights would be acknowl- 
edged and conceded without the thunder of strife. 
But our waiting is vain, and now we are waking up from 
our long sleep of submission, and are shaking off the 
nightmare of an unwomanly superstition. Ay ! " the 
lords " are seeing that at last we are in earnest ; and 
fearing the grand uprising of a long oppressed and 
down-trodden sex, are talking compromise. We want 
no compromise, only our rights, our whole rights, and 
nothing but our rights. And these we will have — 
peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. In the lan- 
guage of the immortal Declaration, we say, " When in 
the course of human events, it becomes necessary for 
our sex to divide the social bonds which have bound 
us with another, and to assume among the powers 
of the earth the separate and equal station to which 
the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle us, a 
decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires 
that we should declare the causes that impel us to the 
separation. The history of man's treatment of woman, 
is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all 
having in direct object the establishment of a con- 
tinued and more absolute tyranny over her. To prove 
this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. 



154 A TAKE-OFF ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

" He has denied us the control of the purse, thus 
depriving us of a most cherished privilege and making 
our expenditures entirely subject to his will. He 
has denied us the right of publicly discussing the* 
political questions of the day. He has denied our 
right to hold office, even the more simple ones, — such 
as justice of the peace, borough mayor, councilman, 
supervisor or policeman, — thus depriving us of honors 
equally due us. He has refused us the use of the 
ballot-box, — the greatest dread of tyrants and the 
most sacred right of a free people ; and one, in the 
use of which, alone, can our liberty be guarded and 
preserved. He has taxed us without representation. 
He enacts laws to govern us, in the framing of which 
our voice and rights are not heard or regarded. He 
has decided we ought not to wear boots, pants, coats, 
hats, whiskers nor mustache, thus depriving us of the 
liberty of dressing as we please, a right only exercised 
by tyrants. He will not allow us to smoke, drink and 
swear without being constantly subjected to his derision 
and insults. He will not allow us to split the wood, 
carry in the coal, shovel the snow from the side-walks, 
nor perform the heavy labor of the house, thus deny- 
ing to us that bodily exercise that gives firmness to the 
muscles, color to the cheek, and strength to the frame. 

" In every stage of these oppressions we have pe- 
titioned for redress in the most humble terms ; our 
repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated 
injuries. Be it so, since they will have it. The road 



A TAKE-OFF ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 155 

to happiness and to glory is open to us too. We will 
tread it apart from them, and hold them, as we hold 
others, enemies in war ; in peace, friends.' ' 

In view of these wrongs, the wonder is, not that we 
rise in defense of our rights, but that we have sub- 
mitted to these wrongs so long. Shame, shame on the 
man who with this declaration before him would unite 
with his fellows to perpetuate these wrongs ! Cold, 
indeed, must be the love of that son for his mother 
who will not move to defend her dearest interests. 
Faint must be the affection of that brother who can be 
content to see his sister's rights crushed and bleeding 
at the feet of a tyrant husband ; but what shall I say 
of those women, who, in this sublime struggle of the 
sex to elevate themselves to influence, respectability 
and power, will yawningly sit in stupid indifference, 
and with criminal complacency play with the chain that 
binds them, and refuse to strike down the tyrannical 
custom that enchains them. Ye women of America, 
awake, arise, or be forever fallen ! Strike now, strike 
strong, for your rights, and freedom from the bonds 
of a degraded servitude ! 

For my rights, I have taken the pen, and, if need 
be, will take the sword. I am resolutely deter- 
mined to never give up the struggle until a complete 
independence is achieved, our rights acknowledged 
and respected, and we stand before the law the com- 
peer of man. There are thousands of my sex who 
feel as I do on this question ; but heretofore our strength 



156 A TAKE-OFF ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

has been frittered away for want of union, of concen- 
tration of purpose, of combination in plan and action. 
In union only is there strength. If we are united we 
succeed; if divided we fail; and our failure will 
be the signal for a new onslaught by our bearded foes. 
Let us move cautiously (for no doubt we are watched) ; 
but let us move determinedly, and success must crown 
our efforts. I suggest that the sisters call a meeting 
quietly, and organize a society something after the 
order of " Know-Nothings,' ' or " Fenians," and in 
these meetings form our plans until such times as we 
are assured a grand public effort will bring victory. 
Let these meetings be held in every neighborhood and 
family where there are two or more women ; and that 
we may know each other as friends of this movement, 
I give the following lines to learn, and either quote or 
sing them when in company, that by these we may 
hail each other as sisters in this glorious cause : 

" O wretched woman ! O defenceless sex ! 
Of the whole animated race most helpless. 
We purchase slavery with wealth and honors, 
And when we take a husband buy a tyrant; 
A stern, domestic foe, morose, unjust; 
Bound by no law himself, and yet demanding 
A strict obedience from the frail and weak." 

Let us be true to our rights, and soon we shall see 
these merciless men-masters of ours rocking the cra- 
dle, kneading the dough, scrubbing the floors, washing 



A TAKE-OFF ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 157 

the clothes, sweeping the house, and humbly asking 
us for a little money for the gratification of an inno- 
cent desire. 

If true to ourselves, we shall soon transact the busi- 
ness of the street, visit the club-room, witness the 
boat-race, twirl the cigar, coming and going at our 
pleasure, with no stern master constantly demanding 
explanations of our conduct. The prospect of this 
delightful freedom should stimulate every woman- heart 
to deeds of heroism and blood. 

Oh for a thousand Charlotte Cordays and ten thou- 
sand Joan of Arcs to strike for freedom, and lead us 
in this holy war ! Ye wives, sisters, mothers, snap the 
manacles that bind you ! Smite the tyrant that op- 
presses you ! Up, up as one mighty, irresistible phal- 
anx, till ten thousand whiskered monsters shall welter 
in their blood, and a million of enslaved women be 
forever free ! 

But let us turn from these noisy chatterers, who 
weep over imaginary wrongs and clamor for imaginary 
rights, who, if they do not entirely neglect the high 
and holy duties of a true womanhood, do but imper- 
fectly perform them, and listen to the fervid utterance 
of the tens of thousands of womanly women all over 
this broad land, who, happy in the position in which 
God has placed them, and in the work He has com- 
mitted to their hands, are heroically and contentedly 
seeking to meet these high and sacred duties imposed 
upon them by the good Father above, as to be entirely 



158 A TAKE-OFF ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

unconscious of any //^-womanly or distressing servi- 
tude attaching to their persons, or the places they fill ; 
who, happy as birds, with sweet and cherry song, voice 
their conviction of woman's rights in these beautiful 
lines : 

" Our rights : what are they ? 
The right to labor and to pray, 
The right to watch while others sleep, 
The right o'er others' woes to weep, 
The right to succor in reverse, 
The right to bless while others curse, 
The right to love whom others scorn, 
The right to comfort all who mourn, 
The right to shed new joy on earth, 
The right to feel the soul's high worth, 
The right to lead the soul to God 
Along the path the Saviour trod, — 
The path of meekness and of love, 
The path of faith that leads above, 
The path of patience and of wrong, 
The path in which the weak grow strong. 
Such are our rights, — and God will bless 
And crown their champion with success." 

For such rights, let all good men and women work 
and pray ! 



DANCING AND DANCERS. 



HAVE been to dances in my younger days ; but 
I never danced, no, never, though I often tried, 
for my Quaker foot, with the tenacity of true broad- 
brim, would not dance : it paid no attention to either 
fiddle or fiddler. I could never scold it into submis- 
sion. Dance it would not, and dance it has not. 
Perhaps it is because I could never make my foot 
dance that I can see neither beauty nor pleasure in 
seeing the feet of others swing in ungraceful move- 
ments to and fro, up and down, out and under. I 
have seen them swing in the quadrille and hug in the 
polka, squat in the schottische and leap in the horn- 
pipe, until, quite exhausted with the effort, they have 
frantically rushed to the windows gasping for air, and 
in it all, I am frank to confess, could see nothing to 
admire. In the ball-room I have seen funny things, 
ridiculous things, and things shockingly immodest, but 
never anything worth remembering that was either 
beautiful or strikingly moral. Now I confess I could 
not learn to dance, and soon quit trying, disgusted 
with myself and others. 

At a ball once given in honor of the great advocate, 
Daniel Webster, he was seen standing at one end of 



160 DANCING AND DANCERS. 

the brilliantly lighted hall, with sublime indifference 
to the dancing and the dancers, in deep conversation 
with a lady, when a fine young man, with each hair 
pasted to its fellow with oil, a wide path clean swept 
from the front of his cranium over the top to its base 
behind, conspicuous with odor from the contents of a 
broken perfume bottle, and his entire outfit the per- 
fection of fashion, stepped to his side, and said, " Mr. 
Webster, do you never dance?" "No, sir," replied 
the great man quietly. " I never had the ability to 
learn." How I should have pitied that young man, 
had I been there to hear that answer. Think of it : 
Daniel Webster wanting ability to learn to dance ! 
How in that word he gave his estimate of the dance 
and dancers ! 

I never could understand what ladies and gentle- 
men were trying to do when dancing, it seemed to me 
so absolutely aimless and senseless. The sailors de- 
scription of a dance to his shipmate is about as lucid 
as the dance itself, and not more so. Said Jack, 
" You first heave ahead, and pass your adversary's 
yard-arm, regain your berth on the other tack in the 
same order, take your station with your partner in line, 
back and fill, and then fall on your keel and bring up 
with your partner; she then manoeuvres ahead or 
alongside of you ; then make sail in company with 
her until nearly astern of the other line, make a stern 
board, cut her off to shift for herself, regain your place 
the best way you can, and let go your anchor." 



DANCING AND DANCERS. 161 

Now, if, with all the nautical lexicons in the land, 
you can understand what Jack means by his descrip- 
tion of a dance, why, dear reader, you know more 
than I do. To me Jack is quite unintelligible, but not 
more so than the movements of men and women in 
the giddy dance. Just look at them. There, elevated 
on a table, is a mustached gentleman, holding a piece 
of wood to his shoulder, and frantically drawing poor 
horse-hair over the dried viscera of a dead feline, 
shouting vociferously incoherent sounds, the meaning 
of which must be guessed at, while men and women 
are madly jumping up and down, scolding, laughing, 
shouting, coughing, wheezing, bowing, smiling, frown- 
ing, winking, blinking, pushing, pulling, sweating, 
rushing, thundering, rumbling, tramping and stamp- 
ing, until the body is exhausted and the lungs cry out 
for air. 

I have often wondered why people dance. Do you 
know, reader? There is nothing intellectual about it, 
or Mr. Webster could have learned ; and I am sure it 
is notoriously true that those who are great ball-goers 
have usually "room to let " in the upper story. It is 
not a healthy exercise, as conducted in the modern 
ball-room, but is, on the contrary, the parent of dis- 
ease and mother of death ; neither does it tend to an 
increase of morality. It is true that some moral peo- 
ple do occasionally attend dances ; but is it not true, 
as a rule, that those who dance most constantly are 
of questionable morals, to say the least ? I wonder if 



162 DANCING AND DANCERS. 

there is a lady or gentleman who would be willing to 
give an honest and full expression of the feelings, pas- 
ssons, emotions and thoughts excited during an even- 
ing spent in a ball-room? Will some one just give 
their "private thoughts while attending the dance " ? 
Few would hazard it, I think. Dancing is not pro- 
motive of nor conducive to piety: indeed, I think 
pious people do not dance. True, some church- 
members are great ball-goers ; but they are not bur- 
dened with a deep spirituality, nor suspected with 
having much Christ-likeness. Think of Jesus, Paul, 
Mary, Martha and John, in fashionable attire, exhaust- 
ing themselves in the dissipations of the dance ! 

Do you wonder that the green-eyed monster, jeal- 
ousy, fattens on the product of the dance ? Witness 
men embracing other men's wives, while the plighted 
wife of another clasps lovingly with her arms the hus- 
band of some other woman ; pure and virtuous sisters 
in the arms of some lecherous villain who is be-whis- 
kered and ringed, with perfume, fashion, falsehood 
and sin ; whose very breath is fatal to virtue ; whose 
embrace is pollution and death ; who, with mask 
aside, could show more girls ruined by his libidinous 
conduct than Sioux warrior scalps from his belt. I 
am not surprised that " masked balls " are becoming 
generally popular ; for surely, many, methinks, would 
wish to screen themselves from the gaze of friends. 

I have no language in which befittingly to describe 
my pity — to express it mildly — for those fathers and 



DANCING AND DANCERS. 163 

mothers who will dance themselves or encourage so 
absolutely a useless and dangerous pastime in their 
children. Who can number the hopes blasted, the 
hearts broken, the consciences debauched, the lives 
ruined, the families beggared and dismembered, and 
the fortunes lost, chargeable to the dance in some 
one or more of its multifarious agencies ? The Re- 
cording Angel alone can tell, and eternity only reveal, 
the ruin wrought by the dance ! 

True, all dancers are not thus ruined ; but is it not 
also true that most who are ruined did or do dance ? 
Men may drink and not be ruined as drunkards ; but 
the terrible probability is they will. So a child may 
be taught to dance, and yet escape a wasted and use- 
less life ; but the probability is it will not, unless ar- 
rested by a gracious Providence when the thought and 
life shall be turned to a nobler and diviner end. I 
most heartily sympathize with the poet who says : 

" What ! the girl I adore by another embraced? 
What ! the balm of her lips shall another man taste? 
What ! touched in the twirl by another man's knee? 
What ! pant and recline on another than me ? 
Sir, she is yours ! From the grape 
Yom have pressed the soft blue ! 
From the rose you have shaken the tremulous dew ! 
What you have touched, you may take ! " 

A servant-woman learning that her young mistress 
was famed for waltzing, went to the window of the 
ball-room to see her movements; but on beholding 



164 DANCING AND DANCERS. 

her in the arms of an exquisite dandy, she at once ran 
off, exclaiming, "Where is young master? A young 
gentleman is hugging young mistress all over the 
room I" 

This has been the thought, if not the utterance, of 
tens of thousands of hearts who suffer all unnoticed 
and unknown. Worth and virtue have been mur- 
dered while the voluptuous dancer has been enshrined 
in many a heart that by right belonged to another. 
Of the danseuse we may say : 

" Such a dancer ! 
" Where men have souls or bodies, she must answer." 

The only reason I have ever heard assigned in favor 
of the dancing- school or the dance, was, that "It 
teaches one to be graceful in their movements and 
easy in their manners.' ' I wonder why parents don't 
give arsenic to their children to drink, that they may 
have rosy cheeks ? For it will give a fine glow to the 
cheek, though it often does bring death. Now, if this 
reason was not so constantly disproved by facts, it 
might be accepted as a valid one. The fact is, there 
are scores who have been to dancing-schools all their 
youthful days, and many of their maturer years have 
been given to dancing with a will, and yet they are 
without either ease or grace in their manners or move- 
ments ; while, on the other hand, there are thousands 
who never saw the inside of a ball-room, nor shuffled 



DANCING AND DANCERS. 165 

in the dance, whose every movement is as graceful as 
that of the wild gazelle. 

Modesty is the twin-sister of grace, and conscious- 
ness of ability and rectitude of conduct the elder 
brother of ease. I have often wondered why people 
with capacity for social and intellectual enjoyments 
should go to dances. The answer is, the people de- 
mand it ; but we should not forget that vox populi is 
as often vox diaboli as vox Dei. Dear reader, adopt 
these sentiments, as penned by a thoughtful young 
woman, and you will forever have good cause for grat- 
itude to God. She says : 

" 1. Dancing would lead me into crowded rooms 
and late hours, which are injurious to health and use- 
fulness. 

" 2. Dancing would lead me into very close contact 
with very promiscuous company ; and ' Evil commu- 
nications corrupt good manners.' 

" 3. Dancing would require me to use and permit 
freedom with the other sex, of which I should be 
heartily ashamed, and which I believe to be wrong. 

" 4. My parents and dearest friends would be anx- 
ious about me if I were out late, keeping company 
with they knew not whom. 

" 5. Ministers and good people in general disap- 
prove of dancing; and I think it is not safe to set 
myself against them. If a thing be only doubtful, I 
wish to be on the safe side. 

" 6. Dancing has a bad name ; and I mean to study 
things that are pure and lovely and of good report. 



166 DANCING AND DANCERS. 

" 7. Dancing is generally accompanied with drink- 
ing; and I know that drinking produces much evil. 

"8. I am told that dancing is a great temptation 
and snare to young men ; and I do not wish to have 
anything to do with leading them astray. 

" 9. Dancing unfits the mind for serious reflection 
and prayer ; and I mean to do nothing that will es- 
trange me from my God and Saviour. 

" 10. There are plenty of graceful exercises and 
cheerful amusements which have none of the objec- 
tions connected with them that lie against dancing : 
these I can enjoy and be happy." 

I feel quite sure that even those who are wholly or 
partially corrupted by the dance will admit that is a 
rational view of the question, finely and truthfully ex- 
pressed. 



THE HISTORY OF A PIECE OF CALICO. 



<WHERE is not one of ten thousand ladies who wear 
^ calico who have any idea of the process of 
making it, and I want them to follow me in a walk 
through the works, watch the process, and, learning 
how much it takes to make a yard of the really beau- 
tiful fabric, never more complain at paying from six to 
twelve and a half cents a yard for it. 

We begin with the Gray Room, into which the raw 
cloth is brought in bales containing forty pieces, each 
piece measuring forty-five yards. These bales are now 
opened, and about twenty pieces are sewed together 
on a sewing-machine, then run through a " shearing- 
machine," which cuts off all long, loose threads and 
the coarser lint, thence passed by machinery into the 
" singe room," where it is made to go over two con- 
vexed plates of iron, heated red hot, that takes off all 
the fuzz, and leaves the cloth perfectly smooth. It is 
then rolled on immense rollers holding eighteen hun- 
dred yards each. These "grays" are now used on 
the print machines, to protect the blankets and the 
bleached goods that are being printed, from getting 
soiled. When done with here, they are taken by 



168 THE HISTORY OF 

machinery again into the Bleach Room, and are put 
into a "kier " filled with lime liquor, then washed in 
clean water, thence into a "vat" containing diluted 
muriatic acid, then washed again, thence into another 
' ' kier" containing soda-ash and resin boiled together, 
then washed, and returned into a liquor called 
" chemic," composed of chloride of lime, then washed 
again, and passed through a liquor of sulphuric acid 
and water, then washed again. 

The "kier" is a large tub of wrought iron, holding 
four thousand five hundred yards. In each "kier" 
the goods remain boiling eleven hours. They are now 
ready for the Dry Room. 

From their last washing, they come into this room a 
wetted rope. They are drawn through a number of 
potted holes and over a series of rollers into an 
"opener;" this is a wood cylinder, around which run 
brass wires about the thickness of bed-cord. These 
wires start from the center and run spirally from right 
to left, thus opening the cloth to its ordinary width. 
It passes over four " openers," and falls into a truck 
holding four thousand five hundred yards, in which it 
is carried to the " drier." This is composed of eleven 
rollers, ten feet long, with a diameter of forty inches. 
This length carries three widths of goods. Six of these 
rollers, or cylinders, are below and five above, playing 
in the cavities of those below. They are all heated 
with steam, carrying about eight pounds to the square 
inch, or boiling heat. The cloth passes entirely 



A PIECE OF CALICO. 169 

around each cylinder, requiring just forty seconds to 
put through a piece of forty-five yards. Though pass- 
ing in dripping wet, the goods come out entirely dry 
and smooth. From here it is " trucked' ' into the 
White Room, where the goods are tied up in immense 
bundles, and packed until wanted for printing, when 
it is dropped through a hatch to the floor below, and 
is sewed together again in legths of fifty pieces, or two 
thousand two hundred yards, and then is rolled on 
wooden rollers and is ready for the printing machine. 
Before describing this, however, we must go into the 
color department, which also is called the " liquor 
shop/' because it is here that the mordants or liquors 
are prepared. This is the liquid of which the colors 
are made. Here are three iron kettles, of fifty, one 
hundred, and three hundred gallons each, set in brick 
over a fire-chamber for heating. The temperature 
required is about two hundred and ten degrees Fa- 
renheit. The red mordant and the acetate of iron are 
the principal liquors used. From here the liquor goes 
into the " Color Room." Here are twelve copper ket- 
tles set in brick also. These kettles have false bot- 
toms to allow an under passage for the steam by which 
the colors are cooked. In each kettle is an " agitator" 
kept constantly going to keep the coloring matter sol- 
uble, and prevent its drying. An average of one and a 
half pounds of flour is used to every gallon of liquor, 
and this, when properly cooked, makes a paste the 
consistency of thick cream, and is ready for the 

is 



170 THE HISTORY OF 

printer. For gum colors, the average is about three 
pounds of gum per gallon of liquor, and no flour. 

The Drug Room is the storage for the drugs and 
material used in mixing. The standard colors are 
blacks, blue, browns and artificial reds. To compose 
these, and the numberless shades of deep and delicate 
colors found in prints, we have these ingredients : viz., 
aniline of saltz, aniline of paste, Persian berries, starch, 
flour, gambier, pigments of all shades, artificial alize- 
rine, indigo, copperas, muriate of ammonia, gum 
gadda, alum, sulphate of copper, bi-chromate of potash 
and brown sugar of lead, all of which is sweetened 
with sugar and poisoned with arsenic. 

We are now ready for the Print Room, where is 
required the greatest care and skill. Here are the 
machines on which the printing is done. Here we 
see the copper "shells" on which the figure is en- 
graved that is to be printed, and under each shell is 
the "color box," containing the color wanted. There 
are as many "shells" and "color boxes" as there are 
colors wanted in the piece, each box furnishing a 
different color to every shell. In each color box is 
kept constantly turning a "furnisher," feeding the 
" shells " with the coloring matter in the boxes. Each 
shell is provided with two "doctors," — plain slabs of 
thin steel, — one in front and one behind, resting 
evenly and closely on the shell's surface. The rear 
one moves with a lateral motion from right to left, and 
removes the surplus coloring matter from it ; while the 



A PIECE OF CALICO. 171 

front one is stationary, and removes all lint or foreign 
excresence from its surface. Much of the skill of the 
printer consists in filing the edges of these " doctors," 
adjusting them properly to the shell, and then the shell 
to the cloth. The speed of the printing is graduated 
according to the pattern. 

From the print machine, by a continuous move- 
ment, the cloth passes over a roller into the "hot 
room," an immense brick oven, carrying a temperature 
of from one hundred and sixty to two hundred degrees 
of heat. Here are fourteen large rollers, which are 
suspended ; seven, twenty feet above the other seven. 
Each printer requires a "hot room" into which his 
printed goods pass immediately, with its soft color, 
where it is promptly dried to the cloth, and no fears 
of its being defaced through subsequent processes is 
felt. From the " hot room " it is passed by a series of 
rollers into the " pegging loft," where it is gathered into 
bundles, and by truck advanced to the "ageing box," 
in which are four hundred rollers, over two hundred of 
which every yard passes. This " ageing box " carries 
a great heat, but differs from the " hot room " in this ; 
that here steam is used instead of dry air, and here we 
oxidize the colors and make^them permanent, while 
in the other we merely dried them. From here the 
prints are sent down over a roller and through a 
" schute " into a fly containing ox-manure ; and from 
here they are taken into the Dye Room. Here every 
particle of paste, gum, and stiffening of every kind is 



172 THE HISTORY OF 

thoroughly washed out by passing the cloth through 
two very large washing-machines, after which they are 
put into "dye tubs," where they remain about two 
hours, during which the colors are "dyed on/' or 
"set," in the language of printers. Into this room 
the goods come almost colorless ; indeed, so dim and 
indistinct, that, to an unpracticed eye, they seem little 
better than the gray goods : but what seemed expres- 
sionless when it came in, goes out of this room with a 
decided expression of beauty and durability. No part 
of the work is more important than the dyeing, and in 
no place is judgment and practical skill more valuable 
than in the dye room. 

We next find the print in the Chemic Room, where 
the goods are run through a wash made of chloride of 
lime colored with ultramarine blue. Here and by this 
process the clear and perfect white is brought out, 
leaving no traces of the coloring matter in the white 
ground of the goods. However well done the work 
may be, down to this point, it is all a failure unless 
they succeed in getting a clear, distinct white ground, 
which is the joy of the printer, the pride of the jobber 
and the delight of the " lassie." The goods are again 
passed through a vat and over a roller until it has 
passed through three vats, and over as many rollers. 
The first vat is filled with chemic, the second with 
bluing, the third with clear water. One of these vats 
is filled with steam. From here it is passed by rollers 
to the " starcher," where it is starched with the ordi- 



A^PIECE OF CALICO. 173 

nary starch to give it some body and smoothness of 
surface, it being, as you would readily imagine from 
all its handling and washing, in a very limp condition. 
It is starched wet as it comes out of the chemic room, 
but goes out of the starch directly over thirteen rollers, 
or sheet-iron cylinders, heated with steam, and comes 
out stiff and dry. It is then carried in bundles to the 
" sprinkler " near at hand. The sprinkling is done by 
a hair brush kept revolving in a trough of water, and 
performs its work much more perfectly than hand of 
woman or mouth of Chinaman. As it comes out of 
the "sprinkler," it is caught and wound on wood roll- 
ers containing from eight hundred to one thousand 
yards each. It is then quickly passed into the " cal- 
lender," a huge smoother or ironer, heated with steam, 
having a perfectly smooth surface, and it irons the 
goods most handsomely. One man will operate a 
callender, and one callender will iron from fifty-four 
to fifty-eight thousand yards per day. Think of that, 
ye weary wives and mothers ! Can't you beg husband 
or father to buy a callender, and with it a big dog to 
run it ? 

From here the cloth is wheeled by trucks into 
the Packing Room, sometimes called the "finishing 
room.' 1 ' Here the goods are taken out of the bundles 
into a " folder," a machine superintended by a woman 
and operated by the driving power of the works. This 
folder moves a large arm from front to rear, taking 
the cloth each way, carrying it just three feet (yard 

is* 



174 THE HISTORY OF 

lengths), and pushing the ends under a clamp, where 
they are securely held until the required number of 
yards making the marketable calico bolt is numbered, 
then its hold is unloosed and the pieces taken out. 
One machine, with a woman to tend it, will fold 
eighteen hundred yards a day. Each fold is then 
carefully handled by hand, and the entire bolt is put 
into merchantable shape. Each piece is now sub- 
jected to a thorough inspection, and classed as first 
and second. It is then ticketed, and marked with the 
number of yards contained in each piece ; then fifty 
or a hundred of these pieces are put into a " press," 
where a hydraulic pressure of two thousand pounds to 
the square inch is brought to bear upon it for from half 
an hour to two hours or more, owing to the style and 
stiffness required. They are then inspected again, 
invoiced, boxed, and are ready for shipping. 

The designer, as the word implies, is the man who 
originates designs. It requires a fertile imagination, 
large originality, and a fine sense of harmony in a uni- 
fied diversity to make a good designer. A man must 
be a good draughtsman and painter to carefully trace 
the lines and modify the colors into a blending so per- 
fect as not to offend the most fastidious. The design 
is made the exact size of the figure wanted on the 
cloth. By means of a powerful lens, the artist is able 
to ascertain the correctness of every line. When he 
has completed a design he reproduces it in a camera 
five times its original size on paper ; then it is trans- 



A PIECE OF CALICO. 175 

ferred to a metallic plate on which the figure is fully 
traced by hand, making small, delicate lines, and is 
ready then for the engraving room, in which are many 
processes curious and interesting. Here we find a 
number of copper rollers weighing when first pur- 
chased some one hundred and eighty pounds, and 
costing seventy or more dollars each. These rollers 
are used until they are reduced to fifty pounds. The 
"shell," as the roller is technically called, is varnished 
with a preparation that will resist nitric acid. After 
being varnished, the shell is put into a " pantograph " 
having thirty iron fingers, each with a diamond point, 
resting immediately over the shell. On the table of 
the pantograph lays the metallic design, enlarged, you 
remember, five times over the original. The sketcher 
now takes hold of a horizontal iron bar, through which 
perpendicularly there passes a steel tracer with a deli- 
cate point. The operator now moves the bar from 
right to left, forward or backward, as the case may be, 
following the coloring and lines on the zinc sketch. 
This bar, moved by the operator, moves the diamond- 
pointed fingers above, and they, resting on the shell, 
reproduce the design perfectly, reducing it five times, 
and thus giving it to us exactly in the size of the 
original. These fingers only cut the varnish on the 
shell. There are not always thirty fingers at work; 
sometimes only four or five, sometimes ten or twenty, 
according to the pattern. The shell traced is taken 
out and submerged in a nitric-acid bath, where it is 



176 THE HISTORY OF 

kept revolving from three to twelve minutes for " etch- 
ing/' according to the required distinctness of impres- 
sion. Coming out of the bath, it is subjected to a 
careful scrutiny, and, if perfect, is set away ready for 
the printer. The shell, after being used, is put into a 
lathe and turned until the former figure is taken off, 
then smoothed with an exceedingly fine-grained stone 
imported from Scotland, and is then ready to be used 
again. Thus one shell usually serves for about two 
hundred impressions. 

From the Gray Room to the Packing Room, we 
find the cloth travels not less than six miles, passes 
through fifty machines and processes, is handled by 
two hundred and eighty men, is sheared, singed, 
bleached, stamped, dyed, washed, dried, starched, 
ironed, folded and pressed, and yet wears for years ! 
Thus this much-admired and universally worn fabric 
called "calico," so becoming youth in its blushing 
spring-time and old age in its sear, worn alike by mis- 
tress and servant, an adornment to womanhood in the 
kitchen or parlor, has a wonderful process before it 
is fitted for highest usefulness ; but in all these pro- 
cesses there is no complaining on its part. And shall 
not we, dear reader, submit to God's fashionings for 
our perfection unmurmuringly ? Let us look into the 
face of the Father of Mercies in the darkest hour and 
in moments of severest pain, and feel, " These make 
me perfect and the better fitted for His service." 
" And we know that all things work together for good 



A PIECE OF CALICO. 177 

to them that love God;" and though much in life 
seems mysterious and dark to us now, all will in the 
end appear bright, beautiful and perfect as the finished 
calico, if we shall be as obedient and pliant in the 
hand of the Divine Artisan as is the cotton cloth in 
the hand of the human workman : then on the other 
side, where will be the completed fabric, we shall be 
forever ravished with the delightful harmonies of His 
perfected work. 



OUT-DOOR PREACHING. 



tSjUT-DOOR preaching boasts of great antiquity ; 
^ indeed, it is the oldest kind of preaching, so 
that it is not only poetically but historically true, that 
" the groves were God's first temples/' and of neces- 
sity the first preaching as done by patriarchs and 
prophets, was done under foliage-domed trees, by 
the murmering water-courses, or in the crowded marts 
of busy trade. It has the highest sanction and war- 
rant also ; for not only did the noble men of the old 
dispensation deliver their awfully grand and impressive 
messages in the open fields and under the blue sky, 
but Jesus, The Model, uttered most of His gracious 
sayings and pronounced most of His discourses in the 
village streets, on the lake shores, or on the mountain 
slopes ; wherever, indeed, He found the people col- 
lected together. 

The first building erected for worship, according to 
monetheistic faith, was the Temple of Solomon ; and 
this seemed needed as the completion of that series 
of object-lessons by which the Supreme tuaght divine 
truth to that sensuous age, and because of the cumber- 
some sacrificial and typical character of the services. 



OUT-DOOR PREACHING. 179 

But this temple was begun only about one thousand 
years before Christ. No churches were erected by the 
early Christians until about A. D. 200 ; then, in A. D. 
305, they were all razed to the ground by order of 
Diocletian. It was only under Constantine that Chris- 
tian churches were built and fostered into perma- 
nence. Antecedent to this, they did their preaching, 
praying and worshiping in caves or on mountains, in 
private houses or retired valleys. And it is worthy of 
observation that with the erection of churches religion 
became less a thing of experience than of form ; and, 
losing the warmth of its early love, out-door preaching 
fell into entire neglect, and the masses were uncared 
for, except as they would report themselves at the 
more formal and public church service. To me, the 
fact that the heathen first caught the idea of a temple 
for their deity from the sepulchres of their dead is 
most significant. These early temples were regarded 
as the residence of the god they worshipped, into 
which only the priest entered, while the people offered 
their homage and devotion on the outside. Is it not 
too often true that our church buildings are only mag- 
nificent mausoleums in which earnest Christianity is 
extinct, and only the pulseless skeleton of form is pre- 
served ? 

Under the Wesleys, their coadjutors and itinerant 
successors, out-door preaching was revived, if not 
from choice, from necessity; for houses of worship, 
halls, and school-buildings were closed against them. 



180 OUT-DOOR PREACHING. 

And this was true of New as well as of Old England ; 
hence, the street corner, the public parks or gardens, 
the fields or woods, were the only places left them. 
Baptized of the Holy Ghost and commissioned of 
God as they were to evangelize the people, they 
pushed out into the thickest of the foe (blest incen- 
diaries of the cross ! ) until the combustible material 
that surrounded them was soon lighted and burning 
with holy fervor. And right well adapted to this field 
service were those early Methodist preachers ; for as 
a rule, they were the sons of poor parents, whose only 
legacy to their children was (aside from grace) the 
best of all, sound bodies. From childhood, most of 
them were accustomed to out-door sports and work, 
and inured from youth to severe manual labor. Hence, 
they were men of stalwart frames, iron constitutions, 
and incredible powers of endurance ; there were few 
dyspeptics, and fewer consumptives, among them. 
Men who could ride on horse back from one to ten 
thousand miles a year, through all kinds of weather, 
shooting their own game, cooking their own meals, 
"blazing" their way through trackless forests, sleeping 
in the rude cabins of the early settlers, or under the 
open sky, in woods or on prairies, with the saddle for 
a pillow and the earth for a bed, were in a good humor 
with Dame Nature, and she most graciously bestowed 
upon them her greatest blessing, — health. With good 
stomach, active liver and sound lungs, they were 
blessed with excellent voices, being rich, mellow, pen- 



OUT-DOOR PREACHING. 181 

etrating and far-reaching. Many of them could be 
distinctly heard, in the quiet evening, a mile away. 

Such men as Lee, Garrettson, Bangs, Finley, Cart- 
wright, Swazey, Sansom, Bigelow, Strange, Taylor, and 
others, could arrest and hold the attention of any audi- 
ence on earth, melting them into tenderness, rousing 
them into activity, or awing them into silence, by the 
silvery eloquence of their utterances. They were sent 
to the " lost sheep of the House of Israel," and out 
into the mountains, forests, and by-ways they went; 
for they were sent with a message to the people, and 
the people they meant to reach. 

By this persistent out-door work they proved two 
things : viz., that they believed the world was their 
parish, and the poor their parishioners. In this early 
day Methodism was esteemed as a clever device of 
the devil by which to deceive the elect, and had, 
therefore, no rights which the churches were bound 
to respect. It was regarded as without warrant of 
Scripture, an innovation so startling as to imperil the 
sanity of the community, the welfare of souls, and the 
very existence of the church itself. 

But human nature is a queer thing to deal with, and 
these enthusiastic ministers, when denied the churches 
and public halls, instead of going to their original call- 
ings, felt " that necessity was laid " upon them to go 
into the streets to sing their songs, offer their prayers, 
and preach their sermons ; and, thank God, "the com- 
mon people heard" them "gladly !" The crowd, you 

16 



182 OUT-DOOR PREACHING. 

know, will instinctively help the weak against the 
strong, arid so they naturally took sides with these 
harmless but persecuted ministers, giving them their 
sympathy and attention at first, and very soon their 
support and affection. 

From these people, converts were obtained, then 
societies were formed, and then followed the opening 
of private houses for religious services, then the barns ; 
then followed the erection of churches, and Method- 
ism, with her fiery earnestness, began to burn her way 
into all ranks of society, gathering strength, influence 
and numbers so rapidly that she smiled at opposition, 
and steadily labored to spread " scriptural holiness " in 
the earth. 

And right here history repeats itself; for, having our 
influence, numbers, and costly churches, we became 
formal, — having lost much of our early simplicity and 
earnestness, — and out-door preaching, except on very 
special occasions, had fallen into general disuse, so 
that, until quite recently, few among us could be found 
to stand on a store-box "singing for Jesus/' or deliver- 
ing a gospel message of life and salvation to the 
hurrying crowd of thoughtless men, who, forgetful of 
God, and careless of their souls, were being borne 
with the rapidity of time to remediless woe. 

It is true, the masses do not come to our churches, 
and are not reached by our ministry. If we would 
save the people, and build up our churches, it is as 
true now as ever that we must "go out and bring them 



OUT-DOOR PREACHING. 183 

in*/" We can find and reach them on the street cor- 
ner, in the parks, public gardens, or on the common ; 
and if we interest them (as we will if our hearts are in 
the work), they will follow us to our churches and be 
easily won to Christ. 

I thank God that to the great awakening of 1857-8 
are we indebted for the "Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation," and to our terrible fratricidal war for "The 
Christian Commission," both of which went to the 
people, in the simplicity of the Gospel, to preach 
Jesus, and offer a willing Saviour to the willing soul. 
To these organizations are we indebted for the revival 
in the modern church of out-door preaching, — this 
God-blessed method of saving souls. 

I would that God would send upon all His ministers 
a baptism so full that it would push us out to the front 
all along the line, instead of lying inactive behind our 
breastworks, tempting disease and cultivating melan- 
choly ! If we would but go out on the skirmish-line 
with faith in God and in His word, I am sure many of 
us would make ourselves illustrious in success, and 
leave our names embalmed in the memories of hun- 
dreds saved through our labors. 



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